


tell me what it feels like getting over

by Mix Stitch (Synph)



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Attempted Murder, Canonical Character Death, Case Fic, Death Threats, F/F, F/M, Haly's Circus, Implied Relationships, M/M, Minor Canonical Character(s), Minor Violence, Multi, Murder, Mystery, On Hiatus, Past Relationship(s), Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-19
Updated: 2015-10-15
Packaged: 2017-12-08 22:56:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 41,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/767018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Synph/pseuds/Mix%20Stitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Heir to the Grayson’s entertainment empire, Dick Grayson has lost two sets of parents and in the process, gained a younger brother as well as a loving found family. When his attempts at bringing his parents’ circus to Gotham City are met with threatening notes and suspicious packages, Dick winds up with a compellingly handsome bodyguard taking up space in his home as a murderer follows on their heels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Story notes in full (as well as beta credits and the like can be found [here](http://synphstories.tumblr.com/post/48326441286/tell-me-what-it-feels-like-getting-over-masterpost))
> 
> This is the first of two backstory heavy chapters introducing my great, big AU. After this, all backstory bits will be kept short or put in a “missing scene” type file if they’re not integral to the plot/chapter.
> 
> Beta Credit goes to tumblr users epigenetics and welcometodelphi. <3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At the heart of it all, Bruce has always done what was right.

** BRUCE WAYNE, AGE EIGHT **

Walking through Park Row is never a pleasant experience.

Normally, Bruce would be clinging to his parents’ hands as they cut through the darkened street on the way back to their tiny apartment above Doctor Tompkins’ clinic. However, he’s still giddy from the movie that they had watched.

They all are.

“Mom,” Bruce says, tugging on his mother’s hand until she looks down at him and smiles. “Did you see how Zorro moved, Mom? He was so fast and so brave!” Bruce lets go of his mother’s soft hand and then leaps away, pretending to thrust an imaginary sword into the air. In his head, Bruce is Zorro and the shadowy darkness of the alley is filled with all kinds of enemies just waiting to be vanquished.

Bruce moves too far away from his parents, dipping into the shadows and seeking out even more pretend villains to fight. He hears his mother make a low noise borne out of worry, but it’s his father who calls him back.

“Don’t go too far, Bruce,” his father chides in a low voice, “Stay where we can see you.” There’s a hushed sound of the two adults speaking to each other and then Bruce hears his father say, “He’ll be fine, Martha.”

“But, Dad,” Bruce says, whining a little (because he’s his mother’s pride and joy and she always indulges him). “There’s no one here but us.”

Bruce runs back to his parents anyway and reaches for their hands so that they can swing him just a little. They don’t get to go out together that often; money is just too tight for anything more than the occasional night out at the movies. So Bruce and his family are in rare form as they walk down the darkened section of alley.

The few street lights above their heads flicker in and out the closer that they come to the other side of the alley that opens up to the main street. Already out of the deepest, darkest part of the alley that they’re in, Bruce is expecting the rest of the walk home to be louder, full of his parents telling him stories about their own favorite movies.

Bruce can’t stop smiling as they come closer to the main street and Leslie Thompkin’s clinic.

However, it doesn’t last.

The sound of a gun cocking echoes loudly in the alley and Bruce’s dad pushes him off to the side with a muttered, “Don’t move, Bruce.”

Bruce crouches down and tries to make himself seem small, watching with wide eyes as a man comes up to his parents. The man is tall, almost as tall as Bruce’s father, but where Thomas Wayne is well-fed and fit; the unknown man with the gun is too thin and his fingers shake around his weapon.

“Gimme your wallet,” the man barks out in a rough voice, gesturing at Bruce’s parents with the shaking gun. He doesn’t wait for Thomas to hand him the wallet and he snatches it away from him without even flipping through the wallet to see if there’s any money within. For a brief moment, Bruce prepares to sit up and crawl out of the shadows, but then the robber’s gaze focuses on the string of plastic pearls around his mother’s neck.

“Take off the necklace,” the robber snarls, swinging the gun up to point at Martha’s face. “Give me the damn necklace before I take it off for you.” When Martha’s fingers fumble with the clasp of her necklace, the robber reaches for her with a nasty curl to his mouth.

Bruce watches with quiet horror dawning in his eyes as his father pushes in front of his mother and the gun fires twice, flashes of white lighting up the night. He opens his mouth to cry out, but then thinks better of it; instead he slaps his hands up over his mouth to keep himself from shouting and drawing the robber’s attention to him as his parents drop down to the ground.

The robber runs away right after that, leaving the Waynes behind in a spreading pool of blood. He doesn’t even bother to take the shattered pearl necklace from around Martha’s neck nor does he stop to notice the little boy sitting in the shadows, staring at him.

“Mom?” Bruce crawls across the dirty ground until he can kneel at his mother’s side. Her eyes are hazy and for a second, he fears that his mother is already dead. But then his mother draws in a pained breath and some of the light returns to her dark eyes as she lifts a hand and touches Bruce’s cheek.

“Go to Leslie, Bruce,” Martha tells him as she rubs a tear away from the corner of her son’s eye and tries to muster up a smile for him. “Tell her what happened and she’ll take care of you. I don’t--” Her sentence cuts off as she coughs loudly into her hand. When she moves her hand away, her fingers are speckled with deep red blood.

Bruce sniffles and looks over at where his father’s body is lying still. “I don’t want you to die, Mommy,” he breathes softly, hiccupping on a sob as his mother’s eyes go glassy. “Don’t leave me alone.”

Martha’s last words to Bruce are spoken through a haze of pain. “You’ll never be alone, Bruce,” she says in a slow murmur as her body starts to go limp. “Your father and I...” She coughs a little and blood spatters over her chin. “W--we’ll always be with you when you need us the most.”

** BRUCE WAYNE, AGE FOURTEEN **

To the patients that come to the clinic, Bruce Wayne is Leslie Tompkins’ assistant and nothing else.

By the time that Bruce is fourteen years old, hardly anyone remembers the small family that had lived above the clinic or the murder that had left a young boy without parents.

Bruce is in high school, attending an illustrious private school on scholarship, but instead of taking up with friends after school, he spends all of his free time in Leslie’s clinic; helping her out and doing his best to protect the patients that can’t protect themselves. He’s her unofficial muscle thanks to days spent working out at the Y and learning to fight from some of the boxers in the neighborhood. But so far, he hasn’t had to lift a finger to stop a situation from happening.

One afternoon after school, everything changes.

Bruce is upstairs in his apartment, the same apartment his parents used to live in, when he hears noises coming from downstairs. He’s used to having his homework interrupted by loud noises and cries of pain from people in need of serious care, but this time, the noises are different. Bruce slides a piece of scrap paper into the biology textbook that he’s been studying on and off for the past hour and reaches for the gloves that he keeps in his desk, already preparing for trouble.

Instead of taking the outside stairs and coming into the clinic from the front door, Bruce takes the indoor entrance that Leslie had installed for moments like these when fast and quiet access to and from the clinic is needed. He pushes aside the loose floor tiles in the back of his second-floor apartment and then wriggles through the space down into the small room that serves as a laundry room for the clinic.

Bruce’s bare feet make next to no sound on the slick tile floor in the laundry room and he rises up from his landing, already paying attention to the noise that he can hear coming from the main room.

As he walks through the dark little hallway that leads to the front part of the building, he stops only to pick up a baseball bat that has been sitting in the corner since one of the neighborhood kids had left it there two years before.

The back part of Leslie’s clinic is locked up and hidden behind a set of free-standing panels that touch the ceiling. Bruce knows from prior experience that only the people who know where to look will even notice the way that the back wall changes to a sliding door on silent hinges. Everyone else simply assumes at first glance that the clinic is smaller than it appears on the outside and, for once, it’s going to work to Bruce’s advantage.

Bruce slides the door open, wincing when he catches a glimpse of a tall, tattooed skinhead brandishing a knife at Leslie through the screen. The older woman stands between him and a worn out young woman who had been brought in late the previous night with severe injuries. No matter how close the thug comes to her, Leslie remains in place between the skinhead and the woman --his victim.

Leslie is always brave, always strong, and in the face of the knife-wielding thug, she doesn’t even flinch as he tries to circle her, scare her away with his knife.

“You must be the man who hurt her,” Leslie says, snapping loud enough that Bruce himself flinches at her sharp tone. “What are you supposed to be: her pimp or her boyfriend? Either way, she won’t be going home with you.” Leslie’s lip curls in a sneer that seems out of character for her, but seems perfectly calculated to anger the tall thug standing in front of her. “Not after the way you broke her arm and beat her.”

The thug sucks his teeth and jabs his knife forward, swinging it through the air as though he wants to cut Leslie. “Get outta my way, bitch,” the man says in what is obviously supposed to be a threatening tone of voice. “If you don’t move, I’ll make you.”

That’s Bruce’s cue to move.

Bruce steps from behind the tall screens, baseball bat held out at the ready. He knows how he looks. Even though he’s only fourteen, Bruce towers over most of the people he comes into contact with. He’s big enough that he can pass for eighteen if he needs to and right now, as he watches his last living guardian be threatened by some creep with a knife, he definitely needs that advantage.

“If you want to hit someone,” Bruce says, striding across the clinic floor with the bat in his hand and a purposefully mean look on his face. “Hit me.” He twirls the bat once, making it fancy the way he was taught to do in order to get his opponent’s attention, and then taps the bat against the floor. “Or are you too scared to hit someone that’ll fight back for a change?”

The skinhead charges at Bruce with a bellow, thrusting the knife forward in a clumsy attempt at slicing a line in Bruce’s gut. He’s far too slow and Bruce hits him _hard_ on the wrist, making the knife fall to the floor with a clatter.  Disarmed, the thug tries to turn away from Bruce and head for the door. He tries to run.

But Bruce isn’t having any of it.

He cuts the thug off with a swing of the bat, sending him down to the ground with a brutal blow to the back of one leg and then sits on him.

“Go get some cuffs from the back, Leslie,” Bruce bites out, still running on the burst of adrenaline caused by the short fight as the skinhead squirms underneath his body and curses up a storm. “We’ll cuff him and I’ll get someone to drop him off at the station.”

When Leslie disappears behind the panels, Bruce turns to the man sitting underneath him. He makes his expression hard and there’s no small amount of satisfaction for the way that the tattooed man pales under his gaze. Bruce curls his fingers in the front of the man’s undershirt and pulls him up until they’re face to face.

“If I ever see you around here again,” Bruce says in a low tone so that neither Leslie nor the sleeping young woman in the bed can hear him. “I’ll do worse than give you a few bruises.”

The thug sneers. “What are you going to do, punk? You can’t protect her for the rest of her life.”

Bruce slams the thug’s back down against the tile and watches as his eyes go wide. “I’ll protect her as long as I have to,” he snarls, “Get out of Crime Alley. Get out of Gotham.”

“And what will you do if I don’t?” Still pushing boundaries, the thug tries one last time to get Bruce to get angry and sloppy. “You’re just a kid. What can you do?”

Bruce narrows his eyes and then casts a meaningful look down at the attacker’s hand. “I could make it so you never held a knife again,” he says, meaning every word of the threat. “You wouldn’t be able to feed yourself, much less hurt another innocent woman.” Bruce cracks his knuckles and then allows himself the chance to smile meanly down at the shivering man. “Is that really how you want to do this?”

The skinhead shakes his head and stammers a shaky no.

“Good to hear.”

** BRUCE WAYNE, AGE NINETEEN **

“Hey! Hey, Rookie!”

It takes a second or two for Bruce to realize that someone is actually talking to him in the slowly emptying locker room in the back of the precinct. He’s so focused on wriggling into his uniform, that he doesn’t notice that he’s being addressed until the other man is standing at his elbow. Even in a room full of cops Bruce still manages to tower over everyone; his field training officer, Max Eckhart, is no exception.

Bruce finally finishes getting dressed and turns to his superior. He has to look down to meet the other man’s beady black eyes and from the way those same eyes narrow, Bruce can tell that his superior resents having to look up at a mere rookie.

“I’m sorry, Sir,” Bruce says in a low voice, ducking his head so that he can at least _look_ respectful even though he’s feeling nothing of the sort. “What were you saying, Sir?”

Eckhart makes a face as though he’s about to scowl, but then seems to think better of it. “You’re riding with me today, Rookie,” he announces in a loud tone. “Get your stuff and we’ll head out.”  He turns, seemingly unwilling to wait for Bruce to put on his gun belt, and walks out of the locker room leaving Bruce to stare after him. “If you’re not in the car when I leave, you’re off the force.”

Bruce scrambles after his field training officer, muttering under his breath when he’s certain that the older man won’t be able to hear him. All of the other rookies in the camp get to ride along with higher ups that don’t look at them like they’re trash. But of course Bruce would get stuck with the one training officer that thinks that Crime Alley should be bulldozed and paved over (with its inhabitants still there).

He sucks his teeth but puts on a burst of speed, making it to the squad car just as Officer Eckhart starts it.

“Put your damn seatbelt on,” Officer Eckhart grumbles, barely sparing Bruce a second look as he drops into the seat while trying to keep his hat from sliding right off his head. “And if I see you slacking off for a second, I’ll write your ass up. Just because this is a simple daytime patrol, that doesn’t mean that you can make me do all of the work.”

Bruce nods, muttering a curt, “Yes, Sir,” underneath his breath as Eckhart pulls out of the parking space.  He waits until they’re on the road to speak up. “Where are we going, Sir.”

Gotham flies by his window, familiar and not-so-familiar streets going by in a blur of washed out grey that brings back memories of taking the bus across the city to his high school.

“You get to see what a real patrol looks like,” Officer Eckhart says in a drawl that’s got a hint of the Deep South in it. “I hope you have all your shots in order, boy, because we’re working Crime Alley.”

\-----------

Home, sweet home.

Bruce probably knows the city streets better than his field training officer, but Officer Eckhart couldn’t care less about the mere rookie doing a ride along with him. He drives through the city as though he owns it, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel and pretending that there’s no one in the car with him.  

Ten minutes pass.

Then fifteen.

Bruce is getting to the point where he wants to move, but when he casts a sidelong glance at Officer Eckhart, the older man is smiling faintly. It’s not even _close_ to being a nice smile.

It hits Bruce all of a sudden: no matter what he does on his ride along, he’s not going to get an inch of slack. He could perform perfectly, do just as good on the streets as he did in training, but Eckhart already has an opinion of Bruce in his head. And it’s not one that bodes well for Bruce making it out of his field training with high marks.

The radio in the car crackles once. Bruce glances down at it as though he wants to reach for it.

“Don’t even think about it, rookie,” Eckhart barks out without even looking at Bruce. “I’m the senior officer in the car so I’m in charge of the radio.” He looks ready to go off on Bruce in the confines of the car, but then the radio comes on again and this time, the dispatcher interrupts them.

“Are any cars in Park Row,” the dispatcher asks, using the proper name for the area where Bruce grew up instead of the more popular name.

Eckhart grabs the radio and thumbs it on. “Eckhart here,” he says into the radio’s mouthpiece. “I’ve got a car in the area. What’s going on?”

When the dispatcher speaks again, her voice is sharp. “Gunshots were fired near the clinic on Fifteenth Street. Can you check it out?”

Bruce feels his blood run cold in his veins. The only clinic in Park Row is Leslie’s clinic and if there are gunshots being fired-- Bruce makes a fist and then sighs, uncurling his fingers as he tries to regulate his breathing. “We need to check it out, Sir.”

“I’ve got a rookie with me,” Eckhart says with a barely hidden sneer in his voice for Bruce’s show of emotion. “I’ll see what I can do. Have ambulances at the ready just in case.” He hangs up the radio mouthpiece and then turns his head to look at Bruce. “Don’t fuck this up, kid.”

With a solemn nod of his head, Bruce addresses his superior in a droll tone. “I won’t if you don’t.”

** BRUCE WAYNE, AGE TWENTY-NINE **

After ten years on the force, Bruce has managed to make more enemies than friends.

Bruce is honest to a fault, even in the corrupt Gotham City Police Department. He doesn’t bother holding his tongue when he sees something wrong. Corruption makes his skin crawl and the GCPD is rife with it.

And why should he keep quiet? Out of all of the officers on the force, Bruce is one of the few that dares to go up against the openly corrupt Commissioner Loeb and his cronies. At six feet, three inches tall, Bruce is still the tallest cop on the force and he’s certainly one of the biggest in terms of sheer muscle. Only a fool would consider trying to jump him in the locker room or mess with him while he’s on patrol.

It’s that combination of honesty, brains, and brawn that calls Bruce to the attention of one of the GCPD’s newest homicide detectives, Lieutenant James Gordon.

\------------

“So what’s your brilliant plan to rid the city from corruption?” Lieutenant Gordon doesn’t mince words. He leans back in his chair and watches Bruce signal for a waiter to come close to the table where they’re sitting. “Both of us are being watched and you think that the best solution is to have a quiet lunch on the outskirts of town…”

Bruce allows himself a quiet bit of laughter. When the waiter comes to stand at the side of their table, Bruce turns to look at him.

“We’re still waiting for a third party,” he says as the waiter focuses on the badge clipped to his chest and starts to fidget the way that most Gothamites do when they come into contact with a member of their police force. “But in the meantime, can I get a large appetizer tray and a coke?”

The waiter nods with a jerking motion of his head and then turns to Gordon. “What will you be having to start?”

Gordon grumbles under his breath, but gives the menu a cursory glance. “I’ll take a coffee.”

“You’re not hungry?” Bruce asks once the waiter is on his way back to the kitchens. “I thought working against corruption would make you hungry.” Bruce leans back in his own chair and turns his head so that he can glance at the door of the restaurant.

“I’m not eating until you tell me why we’re here instead of at the precinct,” Gordon says as though he’s talking to a stubborn child instead of a fellow cop, crossing his arms over his chest and watching Bruce with one eyebrow raised. “Loeb needs to go down. We can’t do that if we’re here eating.”

Bruce nods. “I agree.”

“You… do?” Gordon rubs the bridge of his glasses with his index finger and frowns at Bruce from across the table. “If you agree with me, then why the hell are we still here?” He makes to stand up but then freezes when Bruce shakes his head and drops down in his seat just as the waiter comes back to their table holding a tray with their drinks on it.

Bruce taps two fingers over the tabletop, waiting for their waiter to set their drinks down and leave. “Like I told the waiter,” he says in a low rumble of a voice that has always worked well to see his point across. “We’re waiting for someone else. When he gets here, we’ll talk about my plans.”

A few minutes pass in silence. The front door to the restaurant opens with a tinkling bell and the restaurant goes quiet for a moment as the sound of footsteps gets closer and closer.

“ _There_ you are, Bruce!”

Harvey Dent, one of Gotham City’s youngest and brightest Assistant District Attorneys walks through the restaurant as though he owns the place. He’s smiling, white teeth flashing in a smooth brown face, and even when he notices Lieutenant Gordon, the smile stays on his face. “I can’t believe that you still eat at this place,” Harvey says in a loud voice, clapping a hand on Bruce’s shoulder in a tight grip that lingers longer than it probably should with Gordon sitting across from them. “God, Bruce, how long has it been since we were last here?”

Gordon raises one eyebrow at the two men as Harvey pulls up a chair and sits cattycorner to Bruce at the table. “I didn’t know that you knew an ADA, Wayne,” Gordon says in a suspicious tone. “Is _this_ your brilliant plan?”

Bruce narrows his eyes as if to say, “What do _you_ think?” Out loud, he says, “We went to the same high school and played on the same teams. He’s an old friend.”

“An old friend that happens to have more power in Gotham than the two of us combined,” Gordon notes.

The waiter returns and conversation dies down except for Harvey and Bruce’s conversation about Park Row of all things.

“Have you visited Leslie recently?” Harvey asks once he’s placed his order.

Bruce manages to look guilty even at his age, broad shoulders dipping down at the mention of his former guardian. “Not since last Christmas,” Bruce says as Harvey takes a sip from his coke. “I’ve been…busy. When was the last time that _you_ saw her?”

Harvey’s smile is movie-star perfect.

“Two weeks ago,” he says. “There was a charity fundraiser and she came with one of those Shakespearean actors from the troupe that’s playing here for the next month. Albert Nicklebottom, or something like that.”

“His name is Alfred Pennyworth,” Gordon says dryly, correcting Harvey before taking a swig from his mug of coffee. “He used to be a big name over here. My wife used to love his performances.”

That gets Harvey’s attention and he leans over the table with a smile on his face. “How _is_ Barbara doing these days?”

Bruce’s cellphone vibrates over the top of the table before Gordon can get snippy about Harvey bringing up his family after all that Commissioner Loeb put them through. Bruce picks the phone up and presses a few buttons on the screeen before resting it back on the table and smiling.

“You wanted to know my plan, Gordon,” Bruce says, gesturing at the phone on the table. “If we’re all here having lunch with a police tail to serve as our alibi, then there’s no one around to blame _us_ when a certain set of files winds up on the desk of the editor to the Gotham Globe in a few minutes.”

Harvey laughs and finishes drinking Bruce’s coke with one last pull on the straw and a low noise that Gordon ignores while Bruce feels his face start to warm. “How are you managing that?”

Bruce smiles. “I have friends in higher places than you do.” When Gordon frowns at him, Bruce decides to give him part of the explanation. “The message I just received was from one such friend,” he says. “She has the files and she’s halfway across town with them by now. All we need to do until later is sit here and look as though we’re not planning a revolution of sorts.”

“You’re going to get fired for this, Bruce,” Gordon points out. “The corrupt cops are going down, but so are you.” He looks concerned. “There’s going to be a target on your back a mile wide.”

“I know that Bruce can handle it,” Harvey says, confident in his friend to the very end.

“Besides,” Bruce says when the waiter finally comes with their meals. “I’ve been meaning to get out of Gotham for a while.”

** BRUCE WAYNE, AGE THIRTY-SIX **

It’s one in the morning in England when Bruce gets a phone call from an unknown number with a Gotham City area code. It’s been years since Bruce has been in contact with anyone aside from Leslie and Harvey and the call isn’t coming from either of them.

He flicks his phone open and raises it to his ear, already growling about being forced awake. “Who is this?”

“Bruce, it’s Selina. Selina Kyle.” The woman on the other end of the line is one of the few friends that Bruce has managed to keep in all of his years on and off the force. If she’s calling, then she has something to say. “You remember how you owe me a favor?”

Sighing, Bruce murmurs his assent. “Of course I do, Selina.”

Selina makes a soft noise. “You always wanted to help people and I know that you’ve been doing bodyguard work since leaving Gotham,” she says in a very soft voice. “My godson... He needs a bodyguard for his older brother and you’re the only person I trust to take care of this situation.”

“What’s the problem then?” Bruce asks, picking up on a hint of an emotion in Selina’s husky voice that would normally be kept hidden. “You sound worried. Did you think that I’d say no to you?”

“You’d have to come back to Gotham,” Selina says immediately, “I don’t know if you’ve been watching the news, but things are bad. Some of the corrupt cops are gone, but there’s worse things going on in Gotham than there were before.” She pauses and in the background, Bruce hears the sound of a cat meowing. “There’s still a target on your back, Bruce.”

Bruce hums noncommittally as though the thought of being killed doesn’t bother him --and on some level, it doesn't. He’s tired of hiding and keeping away from his hometown because some cops don’t know the meaning of the phrase “protect and serve”.

“I’ll let you know when I’m back in the States.”

Two hours later, Bruce is on a flight back to Gotham City.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dick Grayson, though privileged in some ways, has had one hell of a life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the second of two backstory-heavy chapters introducing my great big AU. After this, all backstory bits will be kept short or put in a “missing scene” type post/chapter if they’re not absolutely integral to the plot/chapter. See [here](http://synphstories.tumblr.com/post/48397418948/note-about-updates) for info about my update schedule and how I feel about reviews and reblogs (short answer: please do so). Thanks for reading!

**DICK GRAYSON, AGE SEVERAL HOURS**

"He's beautiful," Mary Grayson breathes as she watches her husband John cradle their newborn son in his arms. Their baby, Richard, is so small, tiny and pink with a dark thatch of hair at the crown of his head and the cutest button nose. He looks like a little angel as John holds him close and brushes a gentle touch over the soft curve of their son's cheek.

John looks up at Mary, eyes moist and shining with the unshed tears that he's been holding in throughout his wife's difficult labor.

 "He's going to have your eyes when they darken," John says, repeating the doctor's assurances as he leans back in his chair and looks down at Richard's pale blue eyes that can't quite focus on his surroundings. The baby yawns once and then curls into his father's body as best as he can for an infant that's only a few hours old.  One tiny hand opens and closes into a fist. "We're so lucky that the hospital was so accommodating or else our little boy might have been born in a cornfield or something."

Mary laughs and then winces as someplace low on her body jolts with pain.

"You're one of the richest men in the world, John," she says, once the pain has passed. "Of course the hospital would be accommodating." Mary smiles and then settles back in the pillows, shifting about with minute movements of her hips until she can get comfortable without causing the pain to flare up again.

"Don't put all the blame on me," John replies with a shake of his head and a smile on his face, "Your family's the blue-blooded one." John stands up with Richard cradled carefully in his arms and glances at his weary wife. "Where do you want me to put him?" John asks, taking in the way that Mary looks about to pass out right then and there. "Do you want to hold him one last time before you go to sleep?"

Mary makes to nod but winds up inhaling with a yawn wide enough that her jaw cracks from the strain of it. Face burning with residual embarrassment, Mary waves John away while saying, "I'd be afraid of dropping him when I'm so tired."  Once Richard is squared away in his cot for the rest of the night, Mary inches over on the hospital bed to make room for her husband and pats the firm mattress. "You need to sleep too."

"Do you think that's a good idea?" John asks as he takes in the width of the hospital bed and his wife's slight body. "You need space--"

"And _you_ need to be well-rested when you go tell the troupe that we have a new tumbler joining the ranks," Mary says with a smile, "Come to bed, John." She turns on her side and then stretches out, making the bed look as inviting as she possibly can.

It isn't exactly a hard sell.

Under any other circumstance, it probably wouldn't work.

However John is tired, nearly dead on his feet from hours of being an attentive (but mostly useless) husband and a few minutes later, Mary feels the bed dip down with the weight of her husband's body on the bed.

John presses in close and nuzzles a kiss to the side of Mary's cheek. "I love you," he says in a soft voice. He glances over at where Richard is fast asleep in his cot, tiny mouth working as he pushes out breath from his lungs and smiles. "And I love our son too."

Mary hums and reaches back so that she can take her husband's hand. "I know."

\------------

A few hours later, John and Mary are woken up by the sound of their new son's thin cries.

Mary wakes up first and turns instinctively to where Richard's hospital cot is resting, eyes dark with worry. However, it's her husband that moves to take Dick out of his cot.

John slides out of the bed without barely disturbing the lay of the sheets and pads across the cool tile floor of their private room until he can reach the little cot and gather their son up.

"You're okay," John says in a soothing croon of a voice, lightly rubbing his thumb over the soft black curls of the boy's hair as Richard sucks in air and makes these soft hiccupping cries. "You're fine, Richard. You don't need to cry." The words are more for John's mental wellbeing and for that of his wife than for any attempt at comforting Richard.

"Bring him here, John," Mary says, forcing herself to sit up and look at her husband even though the lure of the surprisingly comfortable sheets and mattress is hard to ignore. "Maybe he's hungry."

Marry taps the control on the mattress that sends the bed up until it's at a comfortable angle for her aching back and reaches for the front of her robe. Dark hair tumbles over one shoulder, heavy curls falling down almost all the way down to her breasts as she makes herself ready to feed her newborn son.

John presses Richard into Mary's arms with a careful motion, making sure that the baby's head is supported properly.

"He looks so sweet," John says in a low voice as he watches Richard suckle at Mary's breast once it's revealed to the chilly hospital air. John sighs and leans against the bed with the small of his back resting on the edge of the mattress.

Looking around the hospital room, he seems to get disheartened.

"Maybe we shouldn't have come to Gotham," John says and it's a whisper that sounds frightening in the stillness of the hospital room. "It's been _years_ since we were here. Remember the threats from back when Mr. Haly ran the circus?"

John thinks back to how they'd met.

John Grayson and Mary Lloyd, two runaways from relatively rich families that did all that they could to live the dream. They ran away to the circus when they were young and never left, even when society did all that they could to separate them and destroy the circus. And then when Gotham City society tired of fighting the two heirs to blue-blooded families, Tony Zucco and the mob moved in and--

John shudders, trying to wrench his mind away from the thoughts that have invaded his head. It's been several years since they were last in Gotham City. The Zucco family can't possibly know that they're here or that they're thinking of moving the company back to Gotham in the future.

Mary sighs and wipes a trickle of milk away from Richard's tiny mouth. At first, it seems as though she isn't going to respond to her husband, but then she opens her mouth.

"It's dangerous isn't it?" Mary asks in a low voice. "If Zucco and his family found out that we were so vulnerable--"

When Mary's sentence trails off, John picks up her slack.

"Zucco would do his damn best to burn the circus to the ground," John says in a bitter sounding voice. "The sooner we get out of Gotham City, the sooner I can sleep soundly at night."

Mary sighs and glances down at Richard's squeezed shut eyes. "I hope our boy never has to come back here without us."

**DICK GRAYSON, AGE EIGHT**

"We're going to get caught," Raya hisses as she follows Dick through the empty hallways of the training rooms in one of the side buildings. "Why do we have to come all the way out here to use the trampoline? There's one in the big tent."

Raya frowns and twists her fingers into the dangling curls of her ponytail. Dick bounds ahead of her, doing easy cartwheels through the hallways as though the risk of being caught and yelled at isn't frightening in the slightest.

And maybe it isn't.

For all that Raya and Dick are mere tumblers in the circus show; Dick is also the son of the owners and the heir to the business. He can --and _does_ \-- get away with everything he does around the circus when things slow down too much for him. If they get caught sneaking around the circus training areas this late at night, Raya can imagine being carried off back to her parents' rooms  in the dorms over the shoulders of one of the guards while Dick laughs and shows off about his status.

Dick's parents are never angry with him. No matter how much trouble he gets into, Dick always comes out of it smelling like roses. Even when he snuck into the elephant enclosure and almost started a stampede, or the time that he wheedled his way into a circus exhibition without really being trained…

No one ever gets mad at Dick.

"You're going to get us caught," Dick says, creeping up on Raya while the red-haired girl is leaning against a wall and trying her best to remember why she's even out here so late after curfew. "We need to keep moving, Raya! The security guards are gonna find us if you stand there like a lump." Dick is frowning, dark brows drawing up together as he reaches out to take hold of Raya's wrist.

When Raya doesn't budge, Dick scowls at her.

"Why aren't you moving, Raya?" He crosses his arms over his narrow chest and taps his bare toes against the tiled floor that never seems to warm up to body heat no matter how long they stand on it. "Do you want us to get caught?" Dick keeps trying to grab hold of Raya's thin wrist and pull her into the shadow of one of the archways in the room, but the older girl isn't having any of it.

"I want to go back to my room," Raya says as she scowls at Dick and keeps just out of his reach. She's bigger than him and faster for the moment and so it's easy for her to just… avoid Dick's reaching fingertips. "It's late and we have to train in the morning. I want to go to sleep!"

Dick pouts. "You're no fun at all, Raya," he announces in a loud voice that echoes through the hallways. "Go back home then. If you're just going to whine, I'm going to go play by myself." Dick turns on his heel, leaving Raya behind in the hallway as he heads deeper into the training facility.

Raya fidgets, watching and frowning as Dick gets farther and farther away from her. By the time she gets up the nerve to speak, Dick's bright green shirt is barely more than a speck at the end of the hallway, but Raya doesn't care. She cups her hands around her mouth, using them as an improvised megaphone.

"You're a jerk, Dick Grayson," she shouts, no longer caring that the building's guards will hear her. "I hope you get in a lot of trouble for this!"

\------------

"You know your mom and I are going to have to ground you, don't you?"

Dick is just coming down from practicing a new trick on the trampoline when he notices his father sitting on the floor of the training room. Like Dick, his father John is dressed in loose pajama pants with the company's logo printed on the side of one thigh. Unlike Dick who is wide awake and brimming with energy from completing a successful trick that's well above his usual skill level, John is ready for sleep and rather unprepared for his son's boundless exuberance.

"Hi, Dad," Dick says, as though it's not minutes to midnight and he's not somewhere that he definitely doesn't belong. "Did I wake you up?"

The idea isn't _that_ impossible to come up with.

Even though the Graysons own Haly's Circus and technically have their own rooms in a separate section of the housing area, John is most likely to be found sleeping somewhere in one of the training buildings on any given night.

John shakes his head, frowning at his only son. "Not you," he says as he rises to his feet and pads across the gymnasium floor. "Raya was outside screaming her head off about something." John pauses once he's able to stand in front of Dick and smiles down at his son, "Security pulled you up on the monitors and pulled me out of my nice warm bed."

Dick has the grace at least to _look_ embarrassed.

"I just wanted to work on some tricks," he says without meeting his father's eyes. "You never let me do anything cool." Dick crosses his arms over his chest and swings his legs back and forth over the edge of the black and blue trampoline. "When am I going to get to do _anything_ fun?"

"When your idea of fun doesn't involve your mother and I worrying about whether or not you'll wind up _breaking your neck_ ," John snaps at his son in a rare show of anger. "You're eight years old, Dick. Even people three times your age need a spotter when they're training. There are rules for a reason!"

Dick huffs, but ducks his head in apology. He even stops the back and forth swing of his legs until he's sitting perfectly still except for a lingering tension in his forearms.

"I'm sorry, Dad," he mutters down at his knees. "I shouldn't have made you worry." He sniffles once, loudly, and then he lifts a hand to wipe roughly at his eyes. "Are you really mad at me?"

'Not as mad as your mother will be," John says, reaching out and ruffling Dick's dark hair until it's standing up in spikes from his scalp. "You know what she told you about using the trampoline without permission…" John trails off when Dick makes a frustrated noise. "You'll be big enough to train with it soon enough."

"But I don't _want_ to wait!" Dick's sentence comes out with more than a little hint of whining and he goes back to kicking his legs in that same sullen swing. "I'm big enough to do more than tumble."

John hugs Dick close for a second. "You're a big boy," he promises, "But you're still not big enough for the trampoline."

"When will I be ready?" Dick asks the question with a noticeable whine and then scrubs at his face with the backs of his hands. "Raya is already doing more stuff--"

"Raya is working with her parents and her sisters during the day," John points out. "Her family is helping her out and I promise that you'll get a chance to work on newer acts when your mother and I get some time off."

This time when Dick huffs, he doesn't bother to pretend that the sound isn't angry. "That could take _years_!"

**DICK GRAYSON, AGE THIRTEEN**

The sound of applause is like thunder in Dick's ears as he stands with his back straight and his head pointing forward as pushy reporters move to crowd around him and his parents. The sound, the noise of the reporters echoing as the show is set up behind them, is almost deafening and Dick can hardly hear the questions shouted out at him and his parents.

All he gathers are the snipped fragments of shouted questions that make him feel like a star.

"--excited for the return to Gotham City?"

"How does it feel to come back--?"

"--your only son, Dick, is starting on the trapeze--"

"--the threats from--"

Dick tunes in for that and he perks up next to Raya as his best friend holds his hand and tries to pretend that she's not three times as nervous as he is. Threats? What threats? He glances at Raya's eyes, trying to ask a question without opening his mouth, but the other teenager just looks just as lost as he feels.

Dick watches as his parents hold their hands up and the crowd stops talking. Dressed in costumes that match the ones worn by the rest of the member of the troupe's trapeze artists, Dick's parents look strong and brave as they stand in front of the reporters and Dick feels so much pride welling up in his chest.

"I'm John Grayson and my wife and I would like to thank you all for coming to our anniversary show," Dick's dad says above the cheers and the sound of popping flashbulbs. "It's been several years since Haly's Circus was last in Gotham, but now we're ready to bring our show back."

John pauses so that the media has the appropriate time to digest the announcement and then pushes on, "Over the past two years, we've been working on bringing the lights and sounds of the circus to Gotham City and now I can finally say that the Graysons are returning to Gotham."

Silence reigns in the half-empty building as the reporters process what they're being told. When it hits them, they start to make noise. They fling questions left and right, asking when the show will be or what the theme of it will be.

Dick can hardly hear himself think, but then his mother steps forward and takes some of the attention off of the rest of the troupe behind her.

"All of the media will be given priority seating during tonight's show," Mary says in a loud tone of voice as she stands in front of the crowd of excited reporters. "I expect to see good press in the papers tomorrow morning! And now, please make way for our business associate and a good friend of the circus family, Janet Drake."

She smiles and then gestures at where a dark-haired woman dressed in a deep purple business suit is waiting off to the side. "Without her and her business sense, our family's dreams would never become a reality."

\------------

All Dick remembers is the rapid fire pop-pop-pop of a gun and the hot spray of blood against his face.

By the time circus security has him sitting with Janet Drake and her young son, Tim, in a private room, the only thing that Dick can focus on aside from the trembling in his hands is the weight of the blanket around his shoulders and the sounds of sirens echoing in his ears.

Janet Drake crouches down in front of Dick, kneeling on the floor and ignoring the way that the dusty floor must be ruining the knees of her suit. "I'm so sorry, Dick," she says, clasping Dick's sticky hands in her own soft ones and running her thumbs over the backs of his hands. "You're not hurt are you?"

Dick shakes his head. Aside from the ache in his knees caused by dropping to the sawdust-covered floor between his parents' broken bodies, Dick is fine.

Physically, that is.

Emotionally, Dick is a wreck. He was there when his parents died, less than two feet away. It could have been him. It should have been him. Dick doesn't usually think in such terms, but his parents could have had another child.

Dick won't ever be able to have another set of parents.

The door to the private back room swings open on squeaky hinges, cutting Janet Drake off before she can speak and try to comfort Dick in her own way, and then a tall police officer comes in.

The man --tall and broad-shouldered with dark hair and a frown on his face-- is dressed in the uniform of a Gotham City patrolman, but where all of the officers that Dick has seen before in the city have an aura of menace about them, this officer is different. He actually seems to want to help and he meets Dick's eyes with his own, holding Dick's gaze even as he reaches behind himself to shut the door and lock it against the crush of reporters clamoring for attention outside.

"You must be Richard Grayson," he says in a low, rumbling voice, sweeping his hat off of his head and making an appropriately somber face. "Did any of the EMTs come and see you yet?"

Dick shakes his head and scowls. "No," he mutters down at his bloody shoes, "No one's come in yet, but I'm not hurt."

The policeman drops down on his knees in front of Dick, heedless of the dust and smeared blood that must be getting on his pants. "I can call for someone to come in and check you out."

"No," Dick says quickly, "I'm not hurt. The blood isn't mine." When Dick looks down at his hands, he remembers the look on his mother's face as the life seeped out of her eyes and the way that the audience for the anniversary show had fallen silent as Dick dropped to his knees in the pool of his parents' blood.

He remembers the cloying feeling of their blood on his fingers--

Janet's hand in the middle of his shoulder blades--

Tim's wide-eyed look as the reporters and audience erupted into chaos--

His hearing comes back in fits and starts and when he looks down at his hands, he's not surprised to see them shaking. However, he is surprised to see the police officer's gloved hands cupping the backs of his hand.

"I-I'm sorry," Dick says as he fights the urge to wipe the tears away from his eyes with his bloody fingertips. "I don't know what happened--"

The officer shakes his head. "You don't need to say sorry," he says as he continues to hold Dick's hands in his own. "I know how you must feel, losing your parents on such a happy night of all times. I know it doesn't mean much now, but you _will_ be alright eventually." The cop looks so earnest, so serious as he kneels on the ground in front of Dick that it should be hard for Dick to judge him--

However, at his heart Dick is a child of Gotham City and eternally suspicious of people that try to comfort him without reason. He narrows his eyes at the cop and gently pulls his hands away until he can rest them on his knees.

"How do you know that?" Dick asks with a narrowed eyed look directed at the man in front of him. "What do you know about loss?"

The cop simply shrugs his broad shoulders and then rises to his feet in a smooth motion. He meets Dick's eyes and lets him see the emotion in his own eyes.

"When I was a child, my parents were murdered in front of me," he says in a low, rough voice, "The murderer got away and the police didn't care enough about an orphan from Park Row to look for him." The cop sneers for a brief moment before the expression is smoothed away into careful neutrality except for the burning look in his dark blue eyes. "I know more than enough about loss."

Dick frowns and looks down at his legs. "I saw the guy who shot them," Dick offers as Janet makes a strangled noise of pure shock. "I'm good with faces and stuff."

The officer smiles with his eyes, but not much else. "Let's get you cleaned up and I'll take your statement," he says as though things are fine and Dick's not seconds away from shaking himself apart at the seams. "If you stay with the Drakes, I'll make sure that someone keeps you updated with the investigation."

It's not standard procedure for a cop; _especially_ not a cop on Gotham City's corrupt police department payroll.

Dick sighs and nods his head. "Thank you," he breathes, returning his stare to his bloody green pixie boots.

The officer makes a soft noise as though he's trying to speak but can't find the words. Eventually, he figures out what he wants to say. "It's the least I can do, kid."

**DICK GRAYSON, AGE EIGHTEEN**

The lawyer sitting across from Dick and Tim in the law firm is an old friend of the Drake family and an even older friend of the Grayson family. He's one of the best lawyers in the state and he is the executor in charge of the Drakes' wills and estate.

"You two have my deepest condolences for your loss," the lawyer says in a solemn tone as he faces the couch where Dick and Tim are sitting side by side. "Your parents --both of your parents-- were good friends of the family and longtime clients, and I would like to extend our firm's services to you as long as you need them."

Tim makes a soft, hurt noise, and closes his eyes. He reaches for Dick's hand instinctively, holding his fingers tightly and missing the way that the skin around his adoptive brother's eyes tightens up.

"I-I don't know," Tim says as he looks down at the papers in front of him without really seeing the lines of text and numbers. "Wh-what did they say?"

The lawyer shuffles the sheaf of papers in his hand. "As you know, by way of adoption, Richard Grayson is your only living family member," he says as if by rote, "With the loss of your parents, Richard is to be your guardian and care for you until you turn eighteen and gain access to your own trust fund."

Dick turns and beams at Tim, wrapping an arm around the younger teen's narrow shoulders in a tight hug. "You're stuck with me for longer than that, Tim," Dick says as Tim makes a noise of complaint and half-heartedly tries to struggle away. "You're my little brother and there's nothing that'll take me away from you."

The lawyer clears his throat to gain Dick and Tim's attention. "Most of the other things on the list are simple enough and involve the trust fund's allocation, however, there's one thing I need to discuss with you, Mister Grayson." His eyebrows draw together in a mild frown. "It involves your parents' circus."

For once, Dick finds himself at a loss for words. "The circus," Dick says, staring at the lawyer as though the older man has suddenly grown two heads. "But Bryan Haly is running the circus over in Star City--"

The lawyer shakes his head once and Dick falls silent. "Only on the order of Janet Drake," he points out, pushing a piece of paper towards Dick and Tim across the desk. "As you can see, ownership of the circus and its entertainment empire were to be returned to you once you turned twenty-one or in the event of Janet Drake's death."

Dick flinches. "She planned for me to take over the company?" Dick asks, voice wavering as his hand presses into the flesh of Tim's thin arm. "But I've never run a company in my _life_. I can't run the circus now."

Tim squirms, pulling away from the weight of Dick's arm and then the fifteen-year-old touches his brother's shoulder.

"You can do it," he says in a firm tone as he seems to put all of the confidence he feels for Dick in a single sentence. "You can finish your parents' plans to return the circus to Gotham City. Bryan can keep running a permanent show on the other side of the country, but Gotham needs a little bit of bright lights and laughter."

Dick... doesn't know what to say at first. Tim has always had so much confidence in him, ever since he was a little kid following Dick around the circus and begging to be taught how to tumble. Confidence is one thing. This... this is something that Dick honestly doesn't know if he can do.

"My parents had degrees and they had experience in the circus," Dick says, turning his face toward Tim and lowering his voice as though the lawyer sitting across from them can't hear him. "I haven't even finished college yet and what good is a degree in sports medicine going to do anyway?"

Tim screws up his nose in a frown. "You're minoring in business," he says, sounding snippy. "I know for a fact that you haven't taken any core classes yet so if you switch things around, I'm sure you can finish up with a business degree. It's not that hard, Dick."

Dick grits his teeth and feels heat prickle the back of his neck. "I can't do this, Tim," he says, practically forcing the words out of his mouth. "I can't take over the circus now and I can't--"

Dick pauses and pushes air out in a gusty sigh and then makes himself keep on talking instead of cutting the conversation off early. "I don't know the first thing about running a circus, Tim."

His little brother scoffs and makes a show off rolling his eyes. "Of course you do," he says in a matter-of-fact tone. "Don't think I forgot how you'd always be in the office with your mom and mine when I was little. You were the one that suggested costumes and new acts. Remember?"

"That was different," Dick says. "I was like ten! And come on, Tim: There's a difference between letting a color-blind kid design performances and costumes and letting that same kid run the whole show."

Tim shrugs. "Obviously, my mom thought that you could do it," he says in a light tone that does nothing to hide the pain in his eyes that comes from mentioning his late mother. "She wouldn't have put that in her will otherwise." Tim offers Dick a small smile and reaches out to pat Dick's knee. "I know you can do it too."

"I guess we could give it a try, little brother," Dick says as he ruffles Tim's hair. "I guess if we need help, Bryan is only a phone call ahead. Thanks, Tim."

Tim smiles for the first time in the weeks since the news broke of the car crash that took his parents' lives (and made Dick an orphan for the second time in his life) and pats Dick's knee again. "You're welcome."

**DICK GRAYSON, AGE TWENTY-ONE**

The threatening notes start arriving a several months before the new theater opens its doors for its inaugural show on Halloween night.

At first, the notes are simple and boring threats made up of cut out magazine lettering on plain brown paper. They promise that the show won't make it to opening night. They tell Dick to get out of Gotham City. For a while, Dick doesn't think that anything will come of them, and then other, more creative notes, start arriving in the middle of September.

First crudely drawn pictures of two broken acrobats in a pool of blood are delivered to Dick's office via a courier that can't tell where the envelopes had come from. The Graysons in a childlike rendering. It hurts Dick to see, but it's technically harmless.

After the hand drawn pictures are even more threats. However where the threats before were brutish and rather inelegant for all that they're threatening a _circus_ , these threats mention getting Gotham City's corrupt politicians to shut the circus down.

The letters say things like "Commissioner Gordon can't save you," and "Don't expect the public to be behind you when the government wants you gone."

Dick gives the letters to Tim to be filed and pushes them firmly out of his mind as he works with the various dancers and acrobats on their routines. Unlike his parents on their anniversary show, Dick won't be taking to the high wire but he wants everything to be perfect for the circus' first full night in Gotham City.

Not even the threats --similar to the ones that his parents must have received when they were trying to open their circus in Gotham City eight years before-- can keep Dick from being optimistic and single-minded in his goals.

However, on the first of October, a box is delivered to the penthouse apartment that Dick shares with Tim and it changes the game entirely. The box is full of crime scene photographs of his parents' deaths in all their gory detail but that isn't what leaves Dick in a panic with his back pressed to the wall of his shower. The photos aren't the only things in the box--

"Is that a bullet?" Tim asks needlessly as he looks down at the plastic baggie laying a few feet away from the shower. "Why would someone send you a bullet in the mail?"

Dick shrugs and then lets his head rock backwards against the tile wall of the shower. "It's not _just_ a bullet," Dick bites out in a rare show of frustration with Tim. "It's the bullet that killed my mother. Someone _mailed_ it to me."

Tim drops the bullet in its bag, looking disgusted as it clatters to the floor. "Who the hell would do that?"

"The same person who's been sending me those messages?"

"We need to go to the police, Dick."

Dick laughs, but it's a mirthless sound. "They're probably the ones behind it," he says with a bitter twist to his lips. "Where else could they get the actual evidence from my parents' case? The Gotham City Police Department is notoriously corrupt."

"If we can't go to the police, we need to get you a good security service and a personal bodyguard," Tim announces as though he's the adult in the room. "You're getting a bodyguard and you're going to take them everywhere with you." They've had the same argument before with Dick shutting Tim down at every turn, but things are different this time.

Dick is scared--

He huffs and lets Tim see exactly how worried he is. "I take it you know where I can get a bodyguard that _won't_ try to kill me in my sleep…"

Tim smiles and it's almost innocent. "I know someone who can help," he says with a secretive smile on his face. "Selina has contacts and she's got a lot of clout in the community. I'll bet she'll help us if we ask."

Dick makes a face. "You think your _godmother_ can be my new bodyguard?"

"What's wrong with that," Tim says with his eyebrows raised all the way up. "Women are some of the best bodyguards today; I know you've seen Lex Luthor's bodyguards and their high success rate. And besides, I never said Selina would be your guard. I said that she can _help_."

"Really?"

Tim shrugs and then drops down to sit beside Dick in the shower. "If you knew half the people that Selina did, you'd understand," Tim says as he pushes the box of photograph and evidence away from them both. "I'll call her tonight and see what she can do."

Dick sighs loudly, pushing his breath out of his lungs a huge noise. "These are the people that killed my parents," he says in a small voice that makes him sound far younger than he is. "And the police probably know who killed them, didn't they?" He rests his head on Tim's shoulder and frowns. "Someone is probably going to try to kill me too, aren't they?"

"Yeah," Tim says because there's nothing else to say, no way to sugar coat things. "Probably."

"I need a better home security system," Dick says as Tim lets him cuddle close for a moment. "We're going to have to boost security for the training area and the circus itself. I'll need that bodyguard as soon as possible and I guess… I guess I'll need to get my will written up before it's too late."

Tim frowns so hard that Dick can feel it in the air. "I guess so…" 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim takes matters into his own hands as far as Dick’s protection is concerned. Following that, Dick makes a fool of himself when he meets his new bodyguard and Bruce has no idea what he’s in for.

**October 3 rd**

Dick Grayson is sitting by himself in his office when he hears a knock on the door.

He rocks backwards in his chair, going through the piles of papers strewn across the desk —business plans and promotional materials for the Gotham City branch of Haly’s Circus that have yet to be approved— and then looks up at the door as though it will open without him answering it.

Tim has a key to Dick’s office.

So does his lawyer Kate and a handful of people who work directly with the day-to-day management of the circus’ Gotham City Branch and have proven themselves as trustworthy. Only a few people knock on his door and most of those people are people that Dick doesn’t really want to see.

He reaches out and presses the little blue button in the plastic casing of the intercom system that connects his office to the one on the corner of Tim’s desk in the front room. After the crackle of static goes away, Tim’s voice comes through crisp and as clear as the sky outside.

“Do you need something, Dick?”

Aside from being Dick’s assistant, Tim is also the partial owner of the circus, and Dick’s favorite (and only) little brother. He speaks into the intercom with a professional cadence, the sound of the crisply pronounced syllables echoing in Dick’s head.

“Is there a reason that you’re using the intercom instead of coming out and talking to me yourself?”

Dick huffs and taps his fingers against the top of his desk. “There’s someone at my door,” he hisses underneath his breath, narrowing his eyes as the heavy thud of knocking fades away into silence for a brief moment before they start over again. “You didn’t tell me that I had an appointment today.”

Dick isn’t mad with Tim, not really, but he’s the boss and it doesn’t hurt to act like it once in a while. “You know that I don’t want to see any strange people when I’ve been getting all of these threats. What’s up with you, Tim?”

Tim sighs loudly enough that Dick can hear it over the intercom’s speaker system. “Do you  _really_  think that I’d do something like that to you?” Tim asks in clipped tones, “Just go get the door, Dick. It’s important.”

With a sigh, Dick pushes his chair back from the desk and rises to his feet. He runs his hands down the front of one of the tailored suits that Tim makes him wear to work so that he can at least  _pretend_  to be professional. Then he takes the few short steps to the door. He closes his hand around the handle and twists it, hearing the soft popping noise of the lock disengaging from his side of the door.

As the door swings open, Dick plasters a smile on his face and prepares to put on a show for whoever it is standing in front of his office. He’s expecting another investor or smarmy politician that either wants to run him out of town or wants the show to bring in millions to the city. What he gets is someone entirely unexpected.

“Are you Richard Grayson?”

There’s a man standing in Dick’s office doorway.

He’s huge, far taller than Dick’s height of five-feet, nine inches tall, and has shoulders broad enough that they almost seem to brush the opposite sides of the doorframe as he takes in Dick’s measure. The man has blue eyes that are the color of the sky outside when it’s about to rain and black hair that’s cut short in a neat, almost militaristic style.

He looks like a cop, a criminal, and an army man all in one.

Dick is torn between backing away and climbing him like a tree.

It’s not that Dick has a physical type (as Barbara, Kory, and Roy would try to say due to the features that the trio have in common), but the man in front of Dick is just oozing power and that flat out does it for Dick. He doesn’t smile once as he looks Dick over from head to toe and by the end of it; the corners of his thin mouth are curled in a faint sneer.

“Is he for me,” Dick calls out over the man’s shoulder, standing up on the tips of his toes so that he can see where Tim is leaning on the corner of his desk where he has the best view of the proceedings. “My birthday is  _next_ month, Timmers. But he’s cute so I’ll let it slide.”

Dick grins at his little brother, making it sharp and just a little bit mean. He’s a little out of his element with this big brute towering over him and it shows. It makes him sloppy. Dick’s not as good at faces as he used to be when he was a child, but there’s something about the man taking up space in his doorway —something familiar and unsettling at the same time.

“I’m not your gift,” the man growls in a low tone at the same time that Tim shouts, “God, Dick. He’s not your birthday gift; he’s your bodyguard.”

Oh.

Dick blinks up at the man standing in front of him and looking absolutely unimpressed with everything that Dick is, and swallows nervously. After seeing the man’s broad shoulders all but brush the opposite sides of the doorway, Dick had expected the man to be someone from the police department, someone who was going to do his best to “convince” Dick to pack up the circus and leave Gotham City.

Hell, he was expecting someone who at very least, works with the city in some way. But then Dick narrows his eyes and really  _looks_  at the man standing in front of him.

“Well you do kind of  _look_  like a bodyguard,” Dick hedges, backing up a few feet and gesturing at one of the chairs in front of his desk as if the man —his new bodyguard— will simply  _forget_  that Dick had been awful to him only a few seconds before. “I’m sorry if I was rude. I usually joke with my little brother like this —”

“No you don’t,” the man says in a deep voice that has a vague hint of a Gotham accent in its depths. “Part of my training involved reading people, and you’re an open book. You were uncomfortable and you tried to make both of us uncomfortable as a defense mechanism.”

The sneer stays fixed on the man’s face and he watches as Dick fidgets underneath the weight of his gaze until it’s almost a physical pressure between his shoulder blades. “How are you the head of this company if you resort to being a child under pressure?”

It’s Dick’s turn to get angry and he does. Feeling his cheeks burn hot with a blush, Dick shakes his head roughly from side to side.

“ _You_  try living under fear that someone is going to try and kill you at any minute,” Dick hisses in a low undertone as he gives into the urge to get angry and to get mean. “I need a bodyguard to keep me safe, but I don’t want anyone who’s going to look at me the way that you do.”

One of the bodyguard’s thick black eyebrows goes up. For the first time since the door’s opening, he looks… impressed with Dick. Or at least he looks as though he doesn’t think that Dick is a  _complete_  waste of his services.

“How do I look at you?” The bodyguard asks as he takes a step forward until he’s invading Dick’s space and the only scent that he can smell is that of the other man’s cologne on his nostrils.

Dick’s brain is short-circuiting from it all: from the nearness of the bodyguard’s big body coupled with the stress of trying not to cave under all the pressure he’s under. He licks his lips to wet them and then looks up at his bodyguard with a frown on his face, hating that he has to look up in the first place.

“You look at me like I’m a complete waste of space,” Dick says, trying not to trip over the words on his tongue as the man continues to stand in front of him like a particularly fleshy  _wall_. “If you don’t like me, then why are you even working for me?”

The man laughs. It’s a quiet laugh and not a nice one at all.

“I owed someone a favor and I always pay back what I owe,” he says, “Even when it means that I have to deal with spoiled, Gotham City high-society brats like you.”

At his bodyguard’s harsh words, Dick jerks back. He feels warm, too warm, and hurt in a way that he hasn’t felt since he was first dating and had one rejection after another (which is silly because no matter how attractive Dick’s bodyguard is, that’s  _all_  he is).

Dozens of retorts pop into his mind only for him to dismiss them half a second later.

Dick stands in front of his bodyguard with his jaw dropped and his hands clenched into fists because no one — not the PETA protesters outside calling for Zitka’s release or the police officers that have made no attempt to hide their hatred of him and his family’s business — have talked to him like this. He doesn’t think he knows  _how_  to react.

In the end, Dick settles for snapping, “I’m not  _spoiled_ ,” in a sullen tone as he crosses his arms over his chest.

“You are spoiled,” the dark-haired bodyguard says as though he’s known Dick for years instead of mere minutes. “You’re a spoiled rich  _child_  and until you understand why that makes you a target, you won’t ever grow up.”

He takes a step forward and then pauses with the tips of his toes touching Dick’s slick leather loafers. He turns slightly so that Dick can see his sharp profile and the dusting of stubble on his cheeks, and then calls out to Tim. “We’ll finish the conversation in here,” he announces as though they’re only talking about the weather. “When we’re done, I’ll come and speak to you both about the team I have assembled. Does that sound alright to you?”

Tim nods once with a jerky motion of his head and then heads back around the desk. He’s got a look on his face, a narrow-eyed frown that makes Dick think that his little brother is going to be listening in on the intercom.

He doesn’t blame Tim though… Dick has a feeling that the conversation that he’s about to have with his new bodyguard is going to be one for the books.

Once the door is closed behind them both — and locked so that while nobody can get in from the outside, Dick can make a quick escape if he has to — he takes a seat in his desk chair and watches as that big hulk of a man looks around his office with a faint frown appearing on his face when he notices the massive windows that would overlook the circus training grounds (and serve as a security risk) if not for the heavy curtains that cover them.

He tries to remember that he’s got no reason to wear a mask for his bodyguard, not when the other man has seen through him already. Hell, Dick thinks to himself as he watches the tall man walk around the dark office as though he’s mentally taking notes on everything that he sees as a weakness in the room, the other man probably doesn’t even notice that Dick is trying to put on a mask.

“You know my name,” Dick says after minutes of tense silence goes by and his bodyguard does nothing more than grunt at him and look at the swords that were a gift from the circus’ time entertaining the Japanese ambassador. “Why don’t you tell me yours? It’s the least you can do.”

Dick gets a smile on his face and makes it a harmless one. He feels like he’s under a microscope with how his bodyguard is looking at him. “And you should sit down,” he insists with his smile staying fixed on his face. “You’re making me nervous with how big you are.”

His bodyguard utters another quiet burst of laughter, but complies without complaint. He sits in the chair on the right in front of Dick’s messy desk and then leans back, steepling his fingers underneath his chin in a way that seems more akin to a super villain than a bodyguard.

“Bruce,” he says just barely loud enough for Dick to hear. “My name is Bruce Wayne.”

Dick recognizes the last name, but that doesn’t mean much. Wayne is a common enough name especially here in Gotham where a Wayne founded everything from the city’s origin in the eighteen hundreds. Every other person in Gotham seems to have had a Wayne as an ancestor. Bruce is just one of thousands of Waynes in the city. That’s all there is to it.

At least, that’s what Dick tells himself as he sits and tries not to feel like an animal on display for Bruce’s dark blue eyes.

“How long have you been a bodyguard?” Dick asks as though this is a routine job interview with a new acrobat instead of an interview with someone who could save —or end— his life. “You’re in your thirties right? How does a guy like you get into a line of work like this?”

At first, it looks as though Bruce won’t answer Dick’s question.

His thin mouth tightens in a frown and his eyes get stormy and dark underneath his eyebrows. Everything about the bunching of muscles in his shoulders and the flexing of his fingers into fists makes Dick feel as though his bodyguard will just get tired of editing his answers for Dick and leave. That shouldn’t be a problem for Dick. He’s used to people storming out of his office.

Part of dealing with contractors and corrupt politicians looking for a quick buck in a bribe is getting to lean back and watch silently as the person on the other side of the desk storms out because he’s too much, too uncooperative, too… much himself.

But Dick… doesn’t want Bruce to walk out like those people did. He wants to be dead wrong about what he’s reading in the other man’s body language.

Part of it, is that there is someone trying to get to him. A bodyguard  _would_  in fact be the smartest thing that Dick has done this entire time and probably the only thing he  _can_  do if he’s not willing to take Barbara up on having one of her exes look into things for him. Running Bruce off because he’s wound too tightly to be anything  _but_  belligerent is one of the worst things that Dick can do in this moment.

The rest of it, and the part of his brain that has been entirely unhelpful about pointing out exactly how attractive Bruce Wayne is, revolves around how long it’s been since Dick has had such an intense reaction to someone that he’s only just met.

Sure, Kory could get his heart pumping fast with just a smile. Same with Barbara.

But that was years ago and Bruce (with those dark blue eyes and that  _jaw_ ) pings every single one of the things that they did and then some.

Of course Tim and Selina would find him a bodyguard that makes Dick  _wish_  that his life wasn’t in danger so that he could hit on the man without worrying about the consequences.

However, Bruce surprises him.

“I used to be a cop in Gotham,” Bruce says without looking away from Dick’s eyes. “I couldn’t protect people while I was working on the force so I wound up in the private protection business once I left the city.”

Getting information is like pulling teeth and Dick shifts in his chair as he tries to figure out to find out more about his bodyguard. Some things, Dick already knows from talking to Tim two nights previous. He knows that his bodyguard has ties to Selina Kyle. He knows that Bruce owed  _someone_  a favor. Dick has some of the pieces to understanding a little bit more about Bruce, but it’s not enough

“You came back because Selina Kyle asked you to,” Dick muses, “What on earth does she have on you?”

Bruce clenches his fists hard enough that his fat knuckles turn white. He grits his teeth and tenses up in his chair as though he’s about to leap up and walk out but then blows the breath out in a forceful expulsion.

“That’s none of your damn business,” he says through clenched teeth as Dick flinches backwards in his chair. “Your assistant hired me to be your bodyguard, not spend time talking about  _my_  life.”

Dick raises his hands with the palms facing outward, a universal sign of surrender. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry,” he says as fast as he can with his heart beating a mile a minute in his chest. “I was just curious.”

Bruce glares at him. “Don’t be.”

—————

Fifteen minutes later and Bruce is at his wit’s end.

Richard “Please-Call-Me-Dick” Grayson is not what Bruce is expecting. Part of the man lives up to the tabloid rumors (the joking way that he wields his humor as a weapon), but the rest of him is surprisingly difficult for Bruce to understand.

The man sitting across from Bruce is a far cry from the boy that Bruce had met on that night at the circus. Eight years ago Dick was small and scared, recently traumatized from the deaths of his parents. He had been a little standoffish with Bruce, a little mean with his words, but Bruce can’t see all of the boy’s strength in the man sitting there and giving him an inane smile.

Bruce can read Dick like an open book, but what good is his ability to read people if he doesn’t understand the man that he’s reading.

Bruce is expecting the presence of old money from both sides of his family to have colored Dick’s personality negatively. He’s expecting his charge to be an empty headed playboy that would do anything to be the life of the party. After all, he puts out that image in public.

However, Bruce should know better than to judge a man on what the Gotham Gazette says about him in the weekend gossip pages. Especially after the things the paper has said about some of the friends he has in high places.

The man in front of Bruce is many things, but an empty-headed playboy isn’t one of them.

Bruce touches a hand to one of the papers on the desk. It’s a sketch of costumes for the circus in colored pencil and some kind of graphite. It looks like one of the costumes on the posters outside and Bruce finds himself becoming impressed with the man sitting in front of him despite himself.

“Did you design these yourself?”

Dick narrows his eyes as though he’s trying to make sure that he’s not the punch line in a very nasty joke and then manages a smile for Bruce.

“I’m not the best artist, but I wanted to make the costumes special,” he says as he traces the deep V-neck on the blue and yellow costume in front of him. “I wanted the acrobats to wear similar suits to the ones that my parents wore.”

The smile on Dick’s face slips away then, frowning at some dark memory within his mind.

“This was their dream, you know,” Dick says unexpectedly as they sit there in the dimly lit office with only their respective memories to comfort them. “They were born in Gotham City and they wanted to bring a little life back into the place.” His gaze turns sullen and he looks away from Bruce.

“And all they got for it were two bullets in the back.”

There it is, the main reason for Bruce taking this assignment after seeing Dick’s masks up close and personal. He  _knows_  Dick. He knows what it’s like to lose everything in the wake of a bullet and even though Gotham City is known for a disproportionate number of gun murders, the unsolved murder of the Graysons is one that will stay with him forever.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Bruce says, meaning every word of it as Dick frowns and seems to lose a little bit of his life with every second that passes. “Your parents had plans to bring so much joy back to our city, but crime is its own business here…” He trails off when Dick only nods his head once and then nods his own head as though it confirms something about Dick to his brain.

“You worked the force back then„” Dick says a few minutes later when Bruce is certain that he’ll have to resort to small talk of all things, “Were you one of the guys on my parents’ case or…” Dick lets his sentence trail off and he eyes Bruce with a testing look in his eyes as the end of the sentence hangs in the air.

Bruce bristles and then forces himself to calm down, retreating to the meditation techniques that had served him well for years.

“I was a good cop,” Brucesays firmly as Dick tries to stare him down. “I was one of the few officers that wanted to find your parents’ killer. I did my best, but I was stalled at every angle I checked out.”

Eight years later and it’s still a raw memory for Bruce who frowns and then retreats underneath a mask of his own. “I’m not going to let someone kill you like they did your parents.”

Dick smiles, but it doesn’t come close to reaching his eyes. “I should hope so,” he says under his breath. “Tim already lost both of his parents; he doesn’t need to lose me too.”

“He won’t,” Bruce promises even though he knows that he shouldn’t say any such thing. “I spoke to Selina and he’ll be getting a bodyguard of my own, one of my best.” It seems like the perfect way to segue into another part of the conversation and Bruce takes his opening.

“Selina and your brother explained some of the circumstances to me once I arrived in town,” Bruce says, watching as Dick’s shoulders start to lose a little bit of their tension. “I do have some questions for you about what’s been happening to you.”

He pauses, trying to figure out the best way to word his sentence properly, and then picks up right where he left off. “I was told that you’re receiving packages with evidence from your parents’ file. Are they the original materials in the case or duplicates?”

Dick shakes his head and mutters a vehement denial. “They were the originals,” he insists, “I remember because the box I had still had the evidence tags on some of the things.”

“What kind of things?” Bruce asks.

Dick reaches for one of the drawers in his desk. It takes a few seconds of jiggling for it to cooperate; but soon, Dick pulls the desk drawer free and yanks a plastic bag from within its depths.

“They sent me crime scene photos and this —the bullet that killed my mother.” Dick all but tosses the bag at Bruce and only years of playing on the force’s baseball squad coupled with excellent reflexes keeps the bag from hitting Bruce in the head. “There’s a cop trying to scare me, Bruce. I’ll understand if you want to go back to wherever you were before.”

It’s Bruce’s turn to shake his own head.

“I don’t go back on favors,” he says in a firm tone that holds no room for argument. “I’m your bodyguard now and that means that I’ll keep anyone from hurting you. Even if there are cops out to get you, I’m not afraid of them.”

Unspoken, is the part of the sentence where Bruce believes that Dick shouldn’t be either.

Dick laughs a little bit and runs his fingers through his hair, messing up the sleek black strands. The gesture makes him look years younger and Bruce find himself warming to his new charge.

“I’ll try my best not to be afraid, Bruce.” Dick says after several moments of silence pass, “But I can’t make any promises.”

Bruce finds himself smiling at his charge. “As long as you can follow my orders, I can keep you safe.”

Dick smiles back at Bruce and then seems to catch himself, smoothing the expression away into something that looks neutral enough. He clasps his hands in front of himself and tries to look serious and stern. “Are we done talking about this now?”

Bruce could drag the conversation on. In fact, he  _wants_  to. However, the flush at Dick’s cheeks, no matter how tempting it is, is a telltale sign that the other man is not in the mood for back and forth banter. Bruce inclines his head at Dick. “I’ll have to talk with my team, but for now I’m done with the preliminaries.”

Dick lets out a sigh and starts to smile.

Bruce can’t help himself nor can he deny the urge to make his charge flush darkly.

“Of course, I still need to talk to you and your brother about what this protection service will entail,” he says as smooth as he can. He doesn’t miss for a second the way a flush sweeps over Dick’s sharp cheekbones and he files the memory away for later. “If the police can’t be trusted to investigate this, then my team and I will need all the help that we can get in order to find the person behind this.”

Bruce pauses to choose his words. “Selina told me that your brother has plenty of contacts of his own and that he volunteered—”

“He did  _what_ ,” Dick says in a low growling tone that gets sharp at the end. “Tim’s my little brother.” He sounds angry at his brother, but fear bleeds through soon enough. “I don’t want him to be a part of this —”

Bruce cuts Dick off with a derisive snort. “He’s already a part of this,” he points out without any of the tact that he should be able to muster for a job like this. “He’s the reason why Selina called in my favor. He can make his own decisions and he’s decided to help us get in touch with his contacts.”

Dick frowns and looks away from Bruce’s eyes. His fingers tap a rhythm over the top of his desk and his full-lipped mouth goes tight. “I don’t want him involved any further,” Dick says in a voice gone small and rough with his worry. “But it looks as though you two have already made up your minds.”

Dick closes his eyes and pushes his breath out in a shaky breath of air. “Don’t let him overwork himself,” he says, “And if you find anything that might hurt him, come to me first.”

Bruce nods his head. “I will.”

He leaves it up to Dick’s mind what he means by that short sentence, rising up to his feet and heading to the door without another word. He opens the door with a fast motion of his wrist and strides outside, already prepared to see Tim sitting at his desk and staring him down. Dick won’t come out until he’s come to terms with what will seem like a loss of freedom and privacy, but he will come out.

For now, Bruce has some questions to ask of his new charge’s younger brother.

Tim Drake is only nineteen years old at the most, but already the teenager has a reputation for not taking anything from anyone. Where his older brother saves his masks for the media, Bruce isn’t sure if the teenager he’s seeing in front of him is the real deal. Tim is poised and quiet, sitting at his desk as though he’s spent the entire time working while Bruce was inside talking to his brother.

Only the barest tightening of the skin around his mouth shows his disposition.

“How much did you hear?” Bruce asks, diving right in as Tim’s fingers flutter in the direction of the intercom system a foot away from his left hand. The tell is such an obvious one that at first, Bruce isn’t entirely sure that he’s getting the right reading from the faintly frowning teenager in front of him. “If you had wanted to be a part of the conversation, you could have just asked your brother to sit in instead of eavesdropping.”

There.

It’s a sentence calculated to make Tim react or work towards calculated non-reaction, and Bruce shifts his weight to his left leg and crosses his arms over his chest in a way that makes him look even bigger than usual. If there’s one thing that Bruce knows, it’s how to use his musculature and carefully chosen positioning to make him seem like even more of a threat.

Tim starts to shake his head but then cuts the motion off.

“The intercom was already on when you two started talking,” he says without a hint of shame in his frosty grey-blue gaze, “If I had turned it off, there would have been feedback and you would have assumed that I had been listening even though I wouldn’t have been. Besides, it only goes one way when you’re in listening mode and Dick never minds when I listen in on his meetings.”

Tim raises his sleek black eyebrows and gives Bruce a look that seems to want to goad him into asking more questions.

Bruce may not work with many teenagers these days, but he knows exactly how to handle one that has more power than the average politician does. He knows how to handle Tim Drake and it doesn’t include being rude to the boy or pointing out that he could stand to be a little bit more helpful unless he wants his brother to be killed.

Slow enough to be subtle, Bruce relaxes his stance until he’s standing with his arms dangling loosely at his sides and his back not  _as_  straight as it could be. It’s as close to a slouch as Bruce will ever allow himself to get and on its own it doesn’t come close to doing the job.

“If you listen in on all of your brother’s meetings,” Bruce starts to say as Tim’s eyes narrow and the weight of his gaze becomes even heavier. “Then you know that Selina told me that you said that you might be able to help my team come up with evidence in the event that we need to take this to the higher authorities.”

He pauses when Tim’s mouth opens and closes. The young man’s eyes go wide, as though he’d been expecting Bruce to chew him out for listening in or something like that. He’s hooked and all Bruce has to do is reel him in a little bit further.

Casting a furtive look at Dick’s still-closed office door as though to make sure that Dick isn’t peeking out at them, Bruce then pushes on.

“Your brother doesn’t want you to get hurt,” he reminds Tim in a low voice, “Take the bodyguard I’m assigning to you even if you’re going to see a contact that you’ve known for years. Jason will make sure that you always know what my team and I are planning and you can contribute like you want to.” Even though Tim is the reason why Selina has finally cashed in his debt to her after several years of radio silence, the boy doesn’t trust him and frankly, Bruce doesn’t blame him.

Tim takes a few minutes to decide. He fidgets a little, touching the neat stacks of papers on his desk and clicking through something on his computer as Bruce stands in front of him. He takes his time with it, waiting until Bruce starts to feel like a chastised child to say, “I’ll do it.”

Bruce does not let a sigh of relief escape his lips. The plan hastily forming in his head requires Tim to cooperate and now it looks as though he’ll have an easier time of getting Dick to do the same.

“Can you call your brother out here,” Bruce says in a low voice as Tim settles back in his desk chair and looks at him. “We need to talk about safe spaces for the two of you and what sorts of protections will need to be put in place as the event comes closer. I can’t do that if your brother is sulking in his office like a child.”

Bruce feels one corner of his mouth lift in a half-smile and he knows that Tim sees it by the way that the boy’s shoulders lift and fall with silent laughter. “The sooner I can set my team up, the sooner you both can go back to work.”

Tim jabs a finger at the intercom button in front of him.

“Dick,” he says with as much exasperation in his voice as he can muster. “You can come out now. Hiding isn’t going to make Bruce go away any faster.” There’s laughter in Tim’s storm-colored eyes, a faint smile on his narrow face. “Don’t make me come in and get you.”

It’s the ultimate threat from a younger brother to his elder sibling: public humiliation at the hands of someone several years younger than he is.

And it works.

A few seconds later, the door to Dick’s office swings open with a faint creaking noise. Dick walks out with a frown on his face. He ignores Bruce for the moment, turning his attention to his younger brother and glaring the entire time.

“I wasn’t  _hiding_ ,” Dick says, talking with his hands in a frantic way that still manages to look elegant. “I have work to do and I can’t do it if you and everyone else expects me to leave my office.”

Tim matches his brother glare for glare, scowl for scowl.

“You also can’t work if you’re dead,” he says, each word coming out in a biting tone that feels like an attack. “Bruce is here to protect you and keep you safe. Why are you making things so difficult?”

After the anger comes sadness and Tim studiously ignores Bruce in favor of looking up at his brother with sad eyes and his eyebrows dipping in above them. “Are you that obsessed with getting this circus show going that you’d piss off the only person willing to help you?” Tim bites his bottom lip and then stares down at his keyboard as Dick’s mouth opens and closes without any sound escaping.

Dick eventually finds his voice as Bruce watches and contemplates interfering. “I don’t want to lose my freedom,” Dick admits, “And I know how much you like having privacy. I was just trying to be a good brother and respect that.”

Tim scoffs and shakes his head, but there’s a softness about the whole thing. “Be a good brother and listen to Bruce,” he says with a nod of his head in the direction where Bruce is standing and trying to look as unobtrusive as a man his age and size is capable of. “When this is all over, things can go back to normal.”

Bruce keeps quiet while the brothers work things out between them. It wouldn’t do to let these two men know that in cases like this, life never goes back to normal.

They may not keep him on as a bodyguard for much longer after their problems stop, but there will always be people out to hurt them because that’s how evil works. Bruce settles for quietly extending his plans into the indefinite future. He doesn’t work for either Tim or Dick.

Selina is paying for his team’s services and if she thinks that the two young men in front of her warrant close protection after Halloween, that’s exactly what they’ll get.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter: Dick has his space thoroughly invaded by friend and foe alike, Tim winds up traumatized for life, and Bruce realizes that this bodyguard assignment won't be as easy as he was hoping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Contains** : canon typical violence, implied animal death at the end  
>  **Notes** : See [here](http://synphstories.tumblr.com/post/48397418948/note-about-updates) for info about my update schedule and how I feel about reviews and reblogs (short answer: please do so). Special thanks goes out to my beta team because without them, this chapter wouldn’t be ready to post at all. Thanks for reading!

Several hours later, Dick finds himself back in the apartment that he shares with his younger brother. However, he and Tim are far from alone and Dick can't handle that very gracefully.

"Do the bodyguards have to stay with us?" Dick says as he watches Bruce and two members of his team go through their apartment.

From his seat on the couch, he can't see everyone that Bruce has checking out the rooms, but from the amount of thudding of footsteps coming from the floor above them, it's enough to make him worry for the carpet. "I know they need to protect us, but does he really need to have his people go through everything  _and_  take over the guest bedrooms?"

The penthouse apartment is large enough for the extra people that Bruce apparently thinks are necessary to keep them safe. With six bedrooms aside from the master suite and the room that Tim keeps on the penthouse's bottom floor, the penthouse is large enough to sleep a dozen people if they double up. Dick knows that it's for his own good (and that a bare handful of guards will actually be staying with them), but it still chafes some selfish part of Dick's brain to watch Bruce and his best guards seemingly take over the one place in the world that's wholly his.

Flopping backwards onto the couch across from Tim, Dick stretches out and nudges the side of Tim's leg with the tips of his toes.

"Come on, Tim. You can't be okay with losing our privacy like that."

Tim makes a noncommittal noise under his breath and barely looks up from his laptop at where his brother is sulking across from him.

"I'm okay with anything that keeps you alive for longer," Tim says in a dry tone, "And if it ever comes to the point that Bruce needs to sleep  _in_  your room with you, I'll be fine with it."

Tim turns his attention to his computer and types in silence for a few minutes as Dick lets his head hang backwards off the arm of the couch and he makes faces at the bodyguards when they walk past through the penthouse.

"Comfort can wait, remember?"

Dick huffs and starts tapping his fingers over his denim clad thighs.

"I remember," he says, unashamed of the whining tone in his voice making him sound years younger. "But that doesn't mean that I have to like it."

Several minutes later, Bruce comes downstairs with the members of his team following behind him. He has them stop behind him as they stand in front of the couch and he clears his throat in order to get Dick and Tim’s attention.

“Most of the team won’t be spending the night here,” Bruce says once his charges deign to look at him. “However, they will be around during the day at your office and at Tim's school. I'll keep you apprised of all shift changes, but first: introductions are in order.”

Bruce gestures to his left at two women that seem relaxed despite the suddenness and strength of Tim and Dick’s staring.

“Anissa and Grace will be your secondary bodyguards,” Bruce says as the two women wave and smile at them in greeting.  “For public appearances Grace -- the redhead -- will be working with Jason, my second in command.”

A dark haired man that looks only slightly older than Tim himself wiggles his fingers in their direction.

“Hey.”

Dick frowns. “Jason looks incredibly young,” He points out warily as he looks at the dark-haired man standing next to a softly smiling young woman with inky black hair and calm black eyes that seem slightly upturned at the corners. “So does she... Are you sure that they’re good choices to guard us?”

“Both Jason and Cassandra have been working with me for several years,” Bruce says sharply, voice holding no room for argument. “I’m proud of my entire team of course, but Cassandra and Jason are my protégés. I trust them implicitly.”

“I have a question,” Tim says, raising his hand as though he’s in school instead of his living room. When Bruce nods at him, he sits up and starts speaking. “If Jason is going to be my personal bodyguard, who do you have for Dick?"

Cassandra steps forward and smiles.

"That would be me," she says in a soft tone of voice. "I'll be working closely with Bruce as he is the primary guard, but since your brother  _is_  the target, he'll have more immediate protection for now."

"For now?"

Bruce glances at Dick. "Once I analyze the threat you face, I'll determine whether or not bringing in the rest of my team will be necessary." Bruce pushes one hand through his short, black hair and sighs. "Is that all?"

Dick huffs out a sigh and then, when Tim elbows him in the side, says, "Yeah, fine. We're good," as he rubs at his ribs with one hand.

\-------------

After Bruce sends Grace and Anissa back to their hotel room ("where they'll debrief the last two members of our team," Bruce says when Tim asks why the two women aren't going to spend the night in the penthouse), the atmosphere settles into something almost normal.

Dick and Tim go back to taking playful potshots at each other in the living room area while Bruce maintains a quiet conversation with Cassandra and Jason near the wide table in the open area that serves as a dining room.

If not for the way that Bruce keeps looking over at them, before muttering even more seriously, it'd feel like a regular weeknight at the penthouse.

Suddenly, the doorbell rings and whatever Tim is about to say in response to Dick's incessant needling is cut off by the loud sound of the customized doorbell playing throughout the apartment.

Dick bolts up and does a little flip off the back of the couch, thanking himself for remembering to put space behind the couch for that very purpose.

"I'll get it," Dick calls out, already trotting across the open floor space to the massive front door. "It's probably another adoring fan." Dick's bare feet make hardly any sound on the wood flooring that stretches from the outsides of the living room section towards the front door, and he actually manages to get within a few feet of the door before Bruce steps in front of him, glowering down at him.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"  Bruce is incensed. His eyes are harsh as he closes one huge hand over Dick's shoulder to keep him from walking towards the door. "Someone out there is trying to  _kill you_  and you walk towards the damn door without a clue. Go sit back down, Dick."

Bruce doesn't raise his voice. He doesn't have to; not when his anger at Dick's carelessness is coming through loud and clear in the stiff posture of his big body and the curl of his upper lip.

"I'll get the door."

Dick opens his mouth to say something --anything-- but Bruce jabs one finger in the direction of the couch so recently vacated and Dick, recognizing something in the older man's hard gaze, decides to step back.

However, he can't resist making one last little comment.

"It's my apartment," Dick says, shifting his body into an aggressive, wide-legged stance and frowning at his bodyguard. "You can get the door if that'll keep me safe, but you're not going to tell me to sit down like I am a child."

Dick frowns and then feels bad. He's never frowned so much in his  _life._  He tenses up further as he realizes that, even more than the challenges facing him and the threats that he's been getting, the person throwing him off of his game so much is the very man that's supposed to protect him at all costs.

Bruce keeps frowning as well, scowling at Dick as though he's not entirely sure what to do with him. They hold each other's gaze as the doorbell goes off again and the sound of impatient knocking starts to join it. Bruce tears his eyes away from Dick's own and glances at the door.

"You can stay at the door, but you'll have to stand behind me," Bruce orders, capitulating to Dick's desire for freedom. "I'm wearing a bulletproof vest and you're not."

Bruce waits until Dick nods and takes a careful step backwards before turning back to the door. The peephole at the door is large enough and high enough in the door that Bruce doesn't have to stoop to look through it. When he glances through the door, he sees a bespectacled young woman in a wheelchair in front of the door.

"Well," Dick says with an expectant look on his face. "Who is it?"

Quickly, Bruce describes the woman on the other side of the door, not missing the way that Dick's eyes brighten with happiness at his description.

"Oh! That's Barbara," Dick says, beaming at Bruce and then pushing him aside so that he can peer through the peephole on his own. "She's safe. She'd never hurt me."

All the way in the living room, Tim makes a scoffing noise that hides no amount of skepticism.

"That depends on your definition of 'safe'," Tim calls out from above the noise coming from his laptop. "And don't forget to warn Bruce about Kory before she just blows in again like usual."

Dick freezes, fingers closing around the doorknob without turning it.

"Oh yeah," he says in a small voice before he turns to Bruce with a sheepish look on his face. "Barbara usually waits until one of us answers the door, but Kory just... comes in. We usually keep the door unlocked because if Barbara is here, Kory is never more than a few minutes away." Dick thinks about his two ex-girlfriends, two of his closest friends aside from Tim and the people at the circus, and then smiles at Bruce. "You can't mistake her for an assassin though. She's taller than you are and has so much hair that you can get lost in it. So if you could tell your people not to shoot..."

Dick trails off and then finally opens the front door with a glance over his shoulder in way he hopes is a warning for Bruce to step back and keep out of the way.

Barbara wheels herself in as though she's lived in the penthouse for years instead of her simply being a visitor to Dick's home.

She has a sharp smile for Dick when he leans in to kiss her cheek and a friendly wave for Tim, but when she looks up at Bruce, her demeanor changes in a noticeable way. Her shoulders tense up and her green eyes narrow until it looks as though she's squinting behind her stylish glasses.

"You look familiar," Barbara says to Bruce as Dick shuts the door behind her without locking it. "Have I met you before?"

Bruce shrugs, broad shoulders working underneath the material of his white t-shirt.

"I don't know," he says in response to her accusing stare. "Maybe if I knew your last name--"

Dick joins the conversation, butting in as Bruce and Barbara share an indecipherable look.

"Barbara is Commissioner Gordon's daughter," he says, smiling as though the bright and happy look on his face will dissipate the tension between his bodyguard and one of his best friends. "And  _Bruce_  was a cop when your dad rejoined the force. Maybe that's how you know each other's faces."

Barbara hums softly and tucks a loose section of deep red hair behind one ear. She looks Bruce over again from head to toe and then nods once.

"Bruce Wayne," she says as though all of the pieces in her little mental puzzle have finally slotted into place. "You were one of my father's closest friends. I remember meeting you once when I was a little girl, right before the Gotham PD was completely overhauled. My father still speaks highly of you."

The smile that Barbara bestows upon Bruce is small, but it feels as though Bruce has passed some extremely complicated test.

"We should move from in front of the door," Dick says, glancing towards the front door as though any minute, it’ll blow open. "You know how Kory is about barging in." He follows it with a smile that Barbara echoes.

Dick follows Barbara over to the open living room area on the far side of the room. She’s quiet which isn’t out of the norm for her, but when she’s got her chair settled on the carpet next to Tim’s loveseat, she reaches out and runs her fingers through the teenager’s sleek black hair in greeting.

“Why didn’t you tell me that you were getting Dick a bodyguard? I had to find out from Selina.”

Tim blushes, nice and blotchy all the way up to his ears, and then shuts his computer down.

“Take that up with her then,” Tim says as he sits up, tucking his legs underneath his body as Barbara smiles at him. “She knew Bruce from before.” They’re talking as though Bruce isn’t still looming around behind them, eyes fixed on Dick as his charge climbs back onto the couch, but the older man doesn’t seem to notice.

Barbara shifts in the seat of her chair, using her arms and upper body in order to reach around and take her bag off the back of it.

“Speaking of Selina,” Barbara says once she has her work laptop booting up in her lap and the familiar green symbol of her company is glowing in the background. “She asked me to give you some help with information.” Barbara looks up from her laptop and gestures for Bruce to sit down beside Dick on the couch. “You’ll want to hear this,” she says, “I found something out about corruption in the force that you’re going to need to know.”

Bruce drops down onto the cushion next to Dick’s bare feet. He makes sure that he keeps to his own little section of the couch, a feat made difficult by the way that Dick is a lot like a lounging cat and stretches out completely until his body takes up most of the couch.

Barbara hides her smile behind the top of her laptop and then taps a set of keys on her keyboard.

“I’m no longer allowed to wander through the evidence locker of the Gotham PD,” Barbara says as a set of files appears onscreen with the first one clearly saying evidence log on it in bold printed lettering, “But I told my dad what was going on and he started a discreet investigation with his hand-picked officers. Do you notice anything about this log?”

At first, the evidence log looks simple enough.

For the past few months, only a handful of officers have made repeat trips to certain parts of the evidence room and even fewer of them have handled any materials from the cold case files. However, one name makes several appearances on the list.

Dick frowns.

"Who the hell is Jim Corrigan and why is he going through my parents' evidence box?”

Dick sits up, leaning over the couch so that he can lean across Bruce and look at Barbara’s screen properly. "He's been in the lockers six times in the past two months. Why hasn't anyone noticed before?"

It's been months, months of frightening messages and threats towards him and his circus, and now Dick has a name to go with the person that has been toying with his emotions and his livelihood.

Bruce clears his throat and then lifts one hand into the air.

"I might be able to answer that," he says with a frown on his face. "It's strange enough that you all might have trouble believing me though."

"Why would you think that?" Dick asks, looking up at Bruce without remembering that he's all but  _sprawled_  across his bodyguard's lap. "Did you work with him when you were on the force?"

"You could say that," Bruce says, looking away from Dick and the other people in front of him as though he has a secret that he wishes to keep to himself. Finally, Bruce pulls the words out and speaks in a rough tone that sounds angry although none of the people in the room can figure out the source to his anger.

"Jim Corrigan was one of the people on the force that I fingered for corruption when I was on the force. Supposedly Corrigan got capped when he tried to cash in a few favors after the scandal came out."

Dick blinks at Bruce, not quite understanding what he's hearing.

"He's dead?"

Bruce nods once. "Dead and buried for over five years according to the lab techs," he says, "No one should be using that name anymore in the police department. Not without raising alarms upstairs."

Everyone in the living room area shares a look that asks the same thing, but Tim is the only one that voices their common question.

"Then who's using his name?"

Bruce shakes his head, but as he opens his mouth to say something, he’s cut off.

The front door blows open hard enough that when the doors slam against the wall behind them hard enough to make them all jump. Bruce jumps to his feet, fingers reaching for a gun in a shoulder holster that Dick had missed completely, and the two guards close ranks around him, reappearing from their check of the penthouse with their own guns in hand.

"Don't shoot," Dick says, getting up and reaching for Bruce's arm as Kory Anders walks in as though she owns the penthouse instead of simply being responsible for the apartment's decor. "It's just Kory, remember? We  _told_  you that she'd be coming."

Bruce makes a rude noise, but makes a gesture for Cassandra and Jason to stand down. He takes a bit longer to put his own gun away, narrowing his eyes at Dick as Kory comes closer.

"You told me that she'd be coming," Bruce says in an angry voice, "You didn't say anything about her breaking down the door to do it."

Not many people can stay angry with Dick when he's doing his best to appear harmless, but Bruce is a natural at it. He glowers down at Dick and then gestures at the tall red-haired woman currently glancing back and forth between them.

"How can I protect you if you have people coming in and out of your apartment like this?"

"Should I have knocked," Kory asks, knowing full well that she's never had the patience to wait for someone to answer the door after she's knocked. "Your friend seems upset with you." Kory manages to look somewhat contrite as she watches Dick stand behind Bruce, but Dick knows Kory and he knows that she's not going to stay that way for very long.

Dick makes a face at Bruce and then steps around him so that he can go and hug Kory.

Taller than Bruce even when she isn’t wearing her favorite red-soled stilettos, Kory makes Dick feel  _small_  when she gathers him up in her strong arms and crushes him to her chest. Kory has always given him good hugs, tight hugs that  _hurt_  in the best way ever especially after Dick has spent a day dodging investors by teaching the young children the ropes.

This one isn't an exception.

Dick breathes in the smell of Kory's shampoo, and gets himself good and tangled up in her thickly curled hair because he can.

Even the weight of Bruce's displeasure combined with the fear of being threatened in his own home doesn't stand a chance against Kory's warmth and the way that her strong brown arms feel around his shoulders.

Eventually, Kory lets Dick go so that he can stand on his own feet and then turns toward Bruce.

"I'm sorry I scared you," Kory says with a smile on her face that makes her look more like a tigress or some other kind of predator than an internationally famous superstar. "Did you really need to yell at Dick though?"

Dick is expecting Bruce to get angry with Kory. Maybe the older man won’t  _show_  his anger, but Dick expects to glance up at his guard and see anger simmering in his dark blue eyes.

Instead, Bruce surprises them all with a momentary pause that leaves the room silent as a thoughtful expression plays across his face. Eventually, Bruce inclines his head and directs a nod in Kory’s direction as a small smile plays across his face.

“You’re right,” Bruce says in that low voice that is fast becoming one of Dick’s favorite sounds, “I should have handled that better on several counts.”

Kory nods her head; looking satisfied with the chain of events as they unfold and then crosses the carpet on staggeringly tall high heels that sink deeply into the plush material. She sits down on the couch next to Barbara and then kisses the other woman on the cheek. When she pulls back, Barbara is smiling and there’s a perfect purple lipstick print one side of her face.

“I’m sorry it took so long,” Kory says to the room at large, “The new doorman downstairs is apparently a fan of my work, and so are the security guards. I had so many autographs to sign.” Kory makes a dramatic face and then notices the images on the screen of Barbara’s laptop. “Are you doing something illegal again, Barbara?”

“It’s for Dick’s problem,” Barbara says before Kory can remind her of how many warnings she’s gotten from her father. “Someone on the inside of the police force is trying to get him to leave Gotham and they’re using his parents to do it.”

It’s the best possible choice of words in order to get Kory to stop thinking about how much trouble Barbara could get into in the future. From the way that her eyebrows draw together and she glances back and forth between Bruce and Dick, it’s working.

Kory purses her lips and looks over at where Bruce is still standing at the far side of the couch.

“You’re the bodyguard that Selina knows.”

Tim rolls his eyes and finally starts to speak up from his quiet little corner of loveseat. “Did she tell  _everyone_  about that?”

“Of course not,” Kory says with a smile, “Only the people that would worry about seeing you with such a grumpy, but attractive man and no smile in sight.”

Dick sits down on the couch next to Kory with a sigh.

“I’ve smiled today,” he grumbles without looking at the smiling woman in beside him. “Even after Bruce showed up in my office.” He scrambles to land upon a topic that he can bring up without Kory worrying over him and then lands upon something that might not only keep him from getting a lecture about his safety, but something that might help him with his problem.

“Do you still perform at the Policeman’s Ball and those other charity things that the GCPD does, Kory?”

Kory nods her head, sending her curly hair tumbling down over one shoulder.

“Every single year,” she says, “After the first year that Renee invited me to perform at one of those things, I couldn’t stay away. It’s for charity after all.” Kory smiles sharply. “And besides,  _someone_  has to make nice with people in power now that Barbara has made it her business to get on the wrong side of every single politician in this damn city.”

Barbara gives Kory a beatific smile.

“You know you like it, Kory.”

“That’s enough flirting from you two,” Dick says, “I need you to do me a favor and talk to some of the officers at the next part you sing at. Someone at the station knows what’s going on with those boxes I’ve been getting and since they won’t talk to Barbara or her dad, you’re our only hope.”

Kory’s made-up lips curve up into a smile and she pats Dick’s knee with one hand.

“There’s a charity fundraiser going on later this week,” she says as she gets herself comfortable on the couch. “Tell me what you need me to find out and I’ll do it for you.”

Dick can’t stop himself from giving in to the rush of affection that threatens to overcome him. He swoops in and smacks a kiss to Kory’s golden cheek.

“You’re the best,” he says before looking over at Bruce and crooking a finger at him in a come-hither motion. “Now let Bruce tell you the short version.”

There’s an all-around eyebrow raise for that one, but Tim again is the one to voice the general sentiment of the other people in the room, saying, “There  _is_  no short version, Dick! We’ll be here all night!” in a dry tone.

Dick shrugs.

“Well it’s short enough.”

\-------------

Eventually, Kory and Barbara leave and silence rushes in to fill the void. The near emptiness of the penthouse apartment means that Bruce can figure out sleeping arrangements for the time being without the knowing looks that the two women were giving him.

Bruce makes sure that he gets the room closest to Dick's own in the master suite, ignoring the way that his charge scowls at him and tries to come up with every possible excuse in order to have Bruce sleep elsewhere for the night.

Not only is there only a narrow space of hallway in front of the two rooms that leads to the stairs, but there's a small secret hallway between them as well. That had been a major selling point for the penthouse. If anything happens in the middle of the night, Bruce won't have to waste any time fiddling with an outside door in order to get to Dick's bedroom.

"Seriously," Dick says as he watches Bruce look through his things and check the balcony door outside of his bedroom. "Do you really think that anyone wants me dead badly enough that they'll climb to the top floor of a fifteen-story building in order to kill me in my sleep?”

Dick is already dressed for bed and all he wants is to cuddle up with his body pillow and drift off to sleep as the sounds of late-night television cocoon him. But, of course, his bodyguard has a different plan in mind.

Bruce finishes closing the curtains to Dick’s balcony and then turns to face his charge.

“We’ll be working on a standard shift change for tonight,” he says as he comes to stand in front of Dick, blocking his view of the television set. "Tomorrow Cassandra and I will be going with you to your onsite meetings with the construction workers and whatever else you might have planned. As much as you might want to try and get away from us in order to have some form of freedom, please think twice.”

Bruce sighs and rubs his forehead at the blank look that Dick is bestowing upon him.

“If you really need to be alone during the day, Cassandra and I will find you a nice  _windowless_  room for you to do your thinking in.”

Dick reaches for one of the smaller pillows on his bed and covers his face with it. He makes a high, frustrated noise against the soft down cushion and then flings the pillow aside.

“Do you guys have to follow me  _everywhere_?”

“Do I need to tell Tim that you’re being difficult,” is Bruce’s sharp retort. He crosses his arms over his chest and glares at his charge, silently wondering what it is that he did to deserve an adult charge as difficult as Dick Grayson is. “There’s someone trying to scare you away from the city,” he points out, “Someone that might even try to kill you. And you’re more worried about having bodyguards following you?”

Dick flinches underneath the blankets and looks away from Bruce’s heavy stare. “When you put it like that--”

Bruce rolls his eyes even though Dick can’t possibly see his face in the dark.

“Get some sleep,” he says as Dick fists his fingers in the loose fabric of the blanket at his waist and starts to wobble a bit as he sits up against the headboard. “Cassandra has first shift and then Jason. I’ll take the last shift early in the morning since Tim says that you rarely wake up before eleven AM. If you need me for any reason, don’t hesitate to come and get me.”

Dick nods his head. “I will,” he says before a jaw-cracking yawn sends him reeling backwards. “I don’t think that anyone will try anything tonight though…”

Bruce shakes his head, unconvinced, but leaves Dick’s bedroom without another word, trusting that his charge will be able to make it through the night undisturbed.

\---------------

The shouting starts around five in the morning, minutes before the alarm on Bruce's phone goes off. It wakes Bruce when he's fast asleep in the surprisingly comfortable guest room bed.

The sound of chaos is loud enough that it snaps into Bruce's mind as he sleeps and jolts him out of the REM cycle into full and proper wakefulness. He bolts up from his bed and then bolts out of his room, running first to Dick's bedroom and then swearing aloud and heading for the flight of stairs when he finds his charge's bed empty. He takes the stairs two at a time, running fast enough that he should be falling. Instead, he makes it to the penthouse's first floor and the living room area without taking a spill all over the floor.

What he finds downstairs is a definite worst-case scenario.

Dick and Tim are sitting on the wooden floor in their pajamas in front of a large plastic box that has a worrying pattern of reddish brown spots splashed all over the top of it. It's troubling enough on its own but then Bruce notices the crimson fluid on Tim's hands and his mind flashes into overdrive.

"What's going on?" Bruce asks, striding forward on the cold floor. He addresses his teammates, Jason and Cassandra as they stand between their charges and the front door with their guns drawn. "What the hell are they doing out of bed?"

"I-I couldn't sleep," Tim says in a soft, wavering voice, "Dick is used to staying up with me when I have trouble sleeping and --"

Dick cuts in, picking up the slack as his younger brother's voice fails.

"We were just talking about business plans when I thought I heard something at the door," he says softly. "I know that you said that we shouldn't open the door, but it was late and I was tired." He waves a hand at the box in front of him. "That's what was outside on the mat. T-Tim was the one that opened it."

Bruce crouches down on his knees and reaches for the box flap nearest him. Holding a clean corner with two fingers, he flips it open with a jerky motion. He doesn't know what he's expecting to see (human remains, some odd kind of evidence...) but the bits of flesh inside of the box aren't it at all. He recognizes that the remains aren't human, the skin is too thick and the bones are too short to be that of a human adult, but he can't quite figure out what he's seeing.

"Jason," he says, calling on the man standing at attention behind Tim's shaking body, "Go take Tim and get him cleaned up. Swab his hands before you wash them and we'll send the samples out if we can't figure out what type of animal this belongs to." He waits until Jason and Tim have gone before looking at Dick over the box, cataloguing his charge’s shaky breath and wide eyes.

The sound of Dick's breath hitching disturbs Bruce and he looks up at his charge with one eyebrow raised.

"Are you alright?"

Dick nods his head.

"I think so," He admits in a low voice. "I’m not hurt or anything. W-we already know what it is and where it came from." He looks down at his shaking hands. “There’s a petting zoo at the circus and it’s already up even though we’re only doing elementary school tours at the building now--” Unable to continue, Dick falls silent, shaking his head and staring down at the bloody box less than a foot away.

Bruce doesn’t need Dick’s help in filling in the blanks.

He knows (not from any personal experience) exactly what kinds of animals make up petting zoos. Bruce fixes Dick with a hard stare that manages to be comforting in a way.

“I’m going to try my best stop this from happening again,” he promises as Dick rubs one hand over his red-rimmed eyes. “I don’t know how they got into your building or how they got this poor animal out of your circus, but I won’t let them hurt you or anyone else as long as I can help it.”

Dick sniffles and rubs at his nose.

“We’re not safe here,” he says a few minutes after Cassandra has placed the box in a heavy-duty garbage bag and set it by the front door for pick up. “The packages were one thing. The threats were something else. But I don’t want anyone --or any _thing_ \-- dying for my sake.”

“I understand,” Bruce says in a solemn tone, “I’ll look into temporary residences for you and your brother.”

“Thank you, Bruce,” Dick says, finally looking up at his bodyguard and offering him a watery smile. “It looks like you’re already saving my ass.”

Bruce can’t stop a smile from taking hold on his face as he looks at his charge. “That’s what a good bodyguard is supposed to do, Dick.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The reality of the situation hits hard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Major apologies for the delay! I'm doing my best to find time to do everything that needs to be done in terms of fannish stuff (including edits and updates on the rest of the story) so hopefully, there won't be another lengthy hiatus for the story for a long while. Thank you for reading!

**TWO WEEKS LATER**

In the days since his anonymous assailant left the delivery at his home, Dick has slept in four different hotel suite scattered all around Gotham City. He's hated every single one of them.

His back aches from beds that could stand a touch more padding. His head hurts from waking up to an alarm that's more jarring than his usual routine of rising with the sun. Dick has seen the sun set and rise in several different parts of the city and he’s getting tired of it. He’s getting tired of not being alone in his comfortable apartment with Tim and their goldfish and the lack of freedom is grating.

“I want to go back _home_ ,” Dick says to no one in particular after dropping down into one of the chairs in the dining room of the hotel where they’ve been staying for the past two days. “I want my indoor trapeze set and my drafting table and my _things_. Can’t they just increase security in the building itself? Why do _I_ have to leave my house for this?”

Dick knows that he’s being a pain in the ass.

He knows that he’s whining like a three year old that doesn’t want to take a nap. He knows that Bruce isn’t going to have any of it if he comes out and hears Dick’s whining.

However, Dick feels as though he’s allowed some sort of lenience as far as childlike behavior goes. He reaches for the box of cereal set in front of his place at the dining room table --some kind of sickly sweet whole-grain _mess_ that has been a guilty pleasure since childhood-- and pours out a bowlful that threatens to spill over the rim.

Tim rolls his eyes and doesn’t bother hiding it. He reaches across the table and takes the box of cereal from Dick’s grip before it can hit the top of the table, holding it up so he can see the nutrition label on the side of the box.

“I don't understand how you eat this junk,” Tim says as a disgusted expression curls up his top lip. “Do you know how much _sugar_ is in one serving?”

“I don’t care,” Dick says in a sullen tone as Tim moves the cereal box out of his reach. “You have your own cereal. Don’t judge mine.” He pours the milk with a flourish, splashing it all over the cereal and sending the marshmallows floating to the top. Then he brings a heaping spoonful up to his mouth.

Bruce appears from the back of the hotel suite dressed in a pair of sweats and a black tank top that makes his broad shoulders look even more massive than they usually do. He takes one look at Dick and his towering bowl of cereal and makes a face.

“Is that what you’re eating for breakfast?” Bruce asks, one thick black eyebrow lifting high with disbelief.

Dick shrugs, too busy crunching down on sweet cereal and marshmallows to respond to his bodyguard. He can’t talk with his mouth full (or rather, he _can_ talk with his mouth full of food, but Tim has never approved) so he has to wade through his suddenly dense mouthful until he can swallow without choking.

After a few seconds of almost frantic chewing, Dick gets rid of the food in his mouth and looks up at Bruce; taking care not to let his gaze linger too long on the impressive way that the older man’s pectorals press against the front of his too-tiny tank top.

“Well we all can’t live on wheat germ shakes and steak sandwiches like you do,” Dick drawls, feeling a little daring for the way that Bruce’s thin-lipped mouth almost curves up into a smile. “Cereal is good for you, Bruce.”

Tim snorts rather inelegantly over his own bowl of cereal --something boring, brown, and bran-- and shakes his head at Bruce.

“Not _this_ cereal,” Tim says with a cheeky little grin that makes Dick want to mess up his younger brother’s hair. “I’m still not sure how Dick still has all of his teeth with how much sugar is in one bowl…”

“Regular dentist appointments,” Dick says through a mouthful of cereal and milk that is guaranteed to make Tim’s nose wrinkle in a disgusted grimace. “You should know this, Timmers. You’re the one that sets them up for me.”

After swallowing and dodging a swat to the head from Tim’s flailing spoon as the teenager squawks “Don’t call me, ‘Timmers’!” in his ear, Dick gestures at the empty chair to the left of Tim’s and looks up at where the bodyguard is looming.

“You should eat if you’re going out.”

Bruce gives Dick another one of those heavy looks, but takes the offered seat. Jason appears from some dark little corner or another and slides a plate of food in front of Bruce.

It’s a huge plate. Dick and Tim stare for a good moment when he sees just how much food that Bruce eats in one sitting: half a dozen eggs, artichokes in some kind of sauce, along with enough sliced ham to make up a whole pig.

“Do you eat like that every morning?” Tim asks, leaning over his own bowl of cereal and staring unabashedly at the pile of food in front of Bruce’s big body. His eyes seem to widen even further when Jason sets down a fruit bowl in front of his boss and a tall glass of orange juice to finish the meal. “Wow! That's... That's a lot of food. Are you sure you can eat all of that?”

Tim pauses, cheeks burning red and pink in places, and then slaps a hand over his mouth.

“Oh god, that was rude of me,” he breathes, looking anywhere but at Bruce's face. “You should eat what you want and pretend I said nothing at all.” After that, Tim busies himself with his cereal and tries his hardest to pretend that he’s not a huge dork.

Bruce laughs from low in his chest and Dick isn’t ashamed in the slightest to admit how much the low sound sets a thrill through his body.

It’s been two weeks, fourteen days of living in such close contact with Bruce and his quirks that Dick almost feels like they're friends instead of employee and employer. Dick is getting to know his bodyguard bit by bit on the way to even out the disadvantages that his bodyguard has over him.

Bruce has had time and a file to study about Dick. Dick only has his charm and the knowledge that Bruce _has_ to be around him so talking is going to happen at some point.

A few minutes pass in silence as everyone around the table settles into eating their respective breakfasts, but the silence doesn't last for long at all.

"Aren't you usually awake before anyone else is?" Dick asks, realizing for the first time that Bruce is in fact dressed but not sweaty.

It seems as though he hasn't gotten a chance to go work out in the gym downstairs of their suite and Dick honestly isn't sure what to make of it. He casts a surreptitious glance down at the face of his watch, frowning mildly when he sees the time.

"It's eight in the morning, Bruce," Dick says with a good dose of genuine shock in his voice, "aren't you already supposed to be well on your way to making us feel like couch potatoes?"

Bruce shakes his head and then smiles at his charge.

"You mentioned wanting to work out yesterday," he says in a simple tone as though it's completely normal for him to remember what Dick is saying that isn't a complaint or a comment about the security. "Do you still want to work out?"

Bruce settles back in his chair and rests his fork and knife down in a neat cross across the plate and watches as Dick tries to add two and two together.

"We'll have the gym to ourselves for two hours if you're interested in working out before whatever you have planned for the day. I'd be happy to spot you."

Dick opens his mouth and then closes it. He thinks about it, about working out with Bruce in such close quarters and suddenly feels his mouth go dry as his heart starts to race in his chest.

“We can work out,” Dick says, only keeping from stammering by imagining Bruce laughing at him for being overeager. “If you want… I know they have a set of gymnastic equipment in the gym.”

“That’s part of the reason why I picked this hotel after the last one,” Bruce confesses, looking very pleased with himself. The smile on his face is small, but it makes him look years younger and more open.  “Apparently, this is where a particularly famous French circus troupe stays when they’re in town. It only took a short conversation with the manager in order to convince him to let us use the room.”

There’s only one thing that Dick _can_ say and he says it down at his soggy bowl of cereal. “I didn’t know that, Bruce,” he mutters down at his cereal as the beginnings of a blush burn on his cheeks. “Thanks for looking out for me.”

Across from Dick, Tim makes a suspicious-sounding noise that almost sounds as though he’s… laughing at his brother. When Dick narrows his eyes at Tim, the teenager smiles and shakes his head.

“Don’t mind me,” he says with a smile that’s supposed to be innocent (but really only makes Dick remember how much his little brother needs to be pranked), I just thought I saw something funny.”

“Yeah?” Dick asks, dragging the syllables of the word out until it stretches between them like a tangible thing, a taut high wire. “Well you’re going to have to share the joke later.”

Dick narrows his eyes at Tim only to get a small grin in response and then turns back to his cereal as Cassandra and Jason sit down with their own breakfasts.

The dining room table is full of conversation as Jason does his level best to bring both Tim and Cassandra out of their respective shells with Dick interjecting every so often with a quip that makes Tim’s ears burn and turn bright red. One thing that Dick can’t regret about this turn of events is that it’s not just him and Tim against the world.  Bruce is here (even if it isn’t for very long) and Cassandra and Jason are good for Tim--

Dick finds himself entertaining however briefly, a thought from the back of his mind that it would be nice if Bruce and his team could stay in Gotham after everything was over. He has to shake his head to clear the thought from it and winds up staring at Bruce as the older man eats his breakfast methodically, one carefully portioned spoonful of egg and artichoke after another.

“Is something wrong?” Bruce asks.

Dick nearly injures himself with the forceful shaking of his head in response to that quietly uttered question. He looks away from Bruce’s strong features, that handsome face and those dark blue eyes, and forces himself to finish eating his cereal even though it has long since turned into a soggy mess at the bottom of his bowl.

Bruce and Dick slip back into their familiar roles and breakfast continues in the same vein for several moments longer until everyone is almost finished eating.

Bruce speaks up once his breakfast is mostly finished, leaning back in his chair and looking at Dick with an unreadable look on his handsome face (and Dick starts to wonder when he started thinking of Bruce as ‘handsome’ instead of the help). “You don’t have any meetings today, do you?” Bruce asks of Dick.

Dick shakes his head, saying no in a low voice.

Today is the day after Kory’s party and he’s all set to lie around the house and wait for his best friend to come back and tell them everything that she’s found out. While Tim has college classes to attend --college classes that he’s been neglecting for quite a few days--, Dick has nothing planned.

No meetings are scheduled in his planner and there’s nothing that requires immediate attention at the circus site.

In all honesty, Dick would be satisfied with just spending the day in the hotel pretending that the world outside doesn’t exist, but there’s something about the look on Bruce’s face that tells him that he’s not going to be so lucky.

“A few days ago, I went through my old contacts from back when I was on the force,” Bruce says, resting his elbows on the table and leaning forward so that he can look directly at Dick’s face. “No one I trust knows why anyone is out to get your circus out of the city. In fact, the way that the circus is creating jobs for people should be a _good_ thing. But there’s someone that wants to meet you and help you with these incidents.” 

He pauses when Dick frowns and starts dragging his spoon through the leftover milk and soggy cereal at the bottom of his bowl.

“It was supposed to be a good thing,” Dick mutters, feeling a headache start to throb in the back of his head. “Ask Tim how much work I put into the business plan for this circus. It was supposed to be a huge opportunity for the city and the circus, but now--”

Dick ends his sentence abruptly and settles for staring into the dredges of milk and cereal bits in his bowl. “Maybe I should just give up.”

Tim slaps a hand on the top of the table. The sound jolts Dick and makes him stare at his little brother with wide eyes. Tim’s face is flushed, his eyes are bright with anger and there’s a fast twitch of muscle at the corner of his tense jaw.

“You are not giving up,” Tim says with a rare show of anger in his voice, “Your parents wouldn’t want you to give up and neither would mine.”

Dick frowns at Tim’s words, but bites his tongue to keep from retorting and hurting the teenager’s feelings. He wants to snap something about how what their parents would have wanted doesn’t matter. He wants to point out that not giving up got his own parents two spaces in their family plot at one of Gotham City’s many cemeteries. And more than anything, Dick wants to crawl into bed and never leave.

Damn the circus.

Damn the person that killed his parents.

Damn the person that is trying to run him out of town (and is honestly close to succeeding).

Dick pushes his chair back from the table and stands up with a jerky motion. He doesn’t look at Tim. He _can’t_ look at Tim. However, Bruce is still sitting at the table and his expression isn’t a mix of hurt and a weighty sort of expectation the way that Tim’s is.

Bruce is not judging Dick for bending underneath the pressure of being forced from his apartment. He’s not judging Dick for being afraid and for not being able to be a port in this storm.

“Let me get dressed,” Dick says to Bruce as he tries to pretend that he’s not seeing the way that Tim’s face falls; the way he starts to stare down at his empty bowl of cereal as though his whole world has just been upturned. “Can we go see your contact now? I need something to do; something that _isn’t_ in this damn hotel and honestly, working out isn't going to cut it.”

Bruce dips his head in a nod and then stands up as well. “I’ll call ahead to let him know that we’re coming,” he says as he gathers up his and Dick’s dishes to take them to the sink. He looks over at where Cassandra and Jason are still sitting at angles to Tim and then glances between his two subordinates as though trying to figure out something.

After a moment’s worth of deliberation, Bruce points at Jason with one long finger outstretched.

“You’ll be with Tim for the day,” he says simply, “Take your bike and make sure that you have the guns and your stun gun. Please don’t forget your concealed carry permit this time.”

There’s a story behind that, one that Dick would love to hear at a later time, but the conversation distracts him.

Jason grins widely, putting Dick in mind of a pleased shark, and then stretches until his back cracks with an audible noise.

“You expecting trouble today, B?” Jason asks as he lounges in his chair and makes no attempt at further movement. “The kid’s just going to school. I don’t need to carry a gun.”

Tim snaps, “I’m not a damn _kid_!” at the same time that Bruce chastises Jason.

“You know what could happen the moment that you let down your guard. You’re my right hand, Jason. I trust you to take care of Tim. Don’t let me down.” Bruce’s voice is solemn, serious in a way that is even more intense than Dick has ever heard it sound in their whole time together, and it just calms him somehow.

Jason sobers, the smile on his wide mouth shrinking down until it’s hardly visible. He nods at Bruce then glances over at where Tim is still trying to pretend that no one else exists.

“I won’t,” Jason says as his gaze lingers on Tim long enough that Dick considers teasing his little brother-- at a later date when they’re not seconds away from snapping at each other. “You’ll take Cass with you as your driver?”

Bruce nods his head and glances over at where his other team member is sitting, cutting an apple into little shapes. “If she doesn’t mind…”

Cassandra looks up at her boss and smiles. Her dark eyes crinkle up at the corners and she holds her hand out in front of her.

“Give me the keys,” she says, “I’ll go get the car warmed up.”

Out of the five of them in the room, Cassandra is the only one fully dressed. Even the short bob of her black hair seems untouched by sleep. She all but bounces to her feet; body brimming with energy and excitement as her black bob swings around her head.

From over the table, Bruce looks at Dick.

“We don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” he points out, as though Dick doesn’t know what he wants. “We can go somewhere else. The beach is pleasant this time of year.”

And yeah, maybe Bruce has a knack for reading the indecisiveness that must be etched into every inch of Dick’s very being, but does he have to use it against him?

Dick makes a face.

“No it’s not,” he mutters, brows drawing together as he remembers the one and only time that his parents had taken him to the gray and smoggy beaches of Gotham City when he was a child. Gotham isn't known for its beaches and considering how polluted the water still is, Dick doubts that they'll ever be known for anything more than the mutated fish that occasionally wash up on shore only to wind up in the national news.

“Talking to your friend is better than the alternative,” Dick says, waving his hand in a gesture that manages to encompass his frustration with everything from Tim's feelings to how much he hates being stuck in a hotel room when he isn't being ferried to and from their hotel. "Who knows... Maybe he'll come up with something we can use so I can sleep in my own bed again."


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After being gone from Gotham for over seven years, some of Bruce's old friends may not be as... friendly as they once were. Now an unknown element, Harvey Dent brings back unpleasant feelings and memories, but he may just have what they need to push forward in finding the person or persons responsible for Dick's harassment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the lateness. Between work, school, and other fannish projects, I have gotten way behind with what I needed to do for this story. Sticking to a regular schedule will be... difficult, especially as I start towards the chapters that I have to write from scratch instead of editing.
> 
> Coming soon, by the way, will be a side-story with backstory for Harvey and Bruce's early relationship that gives a look at how things were between them. It's currently not finished at 4800 words, but it'll be going up in parts as soon as I can edit properly and work on the rest of it.
> 
> Thank you all for your patience and your appreciation! I hope that you'll forgive me for taking so long to get this story up in regular intervals.
> 
> ETA (5/11/2014): I fleshed out some stuff between Harvey and Bruce to make it clearer what their prior relationship was. I'm working on like twenty different things at the same time and two of them are pre-series backstory works for this universe (one of which is for the DC Big Bang this year) which is part of why updates are nonexistent. I'm still working on getting this story done though and I will do my best to get to where I need to be so posting can resume. Major apologies for that! I appreciate all my readers though! <3

Cassandra drives as though she was born to it, maneuvering through the streets of Gotham City so quickly that Bruce suspects that she isn’t at all driving at the speed limit.

Bruce clutches the bar above his head, winding his fingers around it and holding on as Cassandra takes a corner particularly fast, sending Dick sliding into him over on the leather seats in their rental car. On instinct, Bruce wraps his other arm around Dick’s waist and holds him steady as Cassandra speeds through the city. He tells himself that he’s only touching Dick to keep him safe --that he’ll be able to keep Dick from sprawling all over the place regardless of his seatbelt if he's touching Dick.

However, Bruce is wrong about his own motives and he fast realizes that.

Underneath the loose fabric of Dick’s suit jacket is a very fit body. Bruce feels the warmth of his charge’s skin through the thin cotton of his t-shirt and instinctively inches closer until they’re pressed together hip to hip on the wide leather seat of the car. The instincts that rise up in his body are intense from the start and Bruce finds himself glancing down at Dick’s bright eyes and lingering longer than he should.

Cassandra glances up and catches Bruce’s gaze through the rearview mirror. She smiles in her secretive way. She doesn’t seem fazed by the way that Bruce frowns at her over her head.

The young woman simply shrugs as if to say that she can’t help the situation; then jerks the steering wheel in a sharp motion that sends their car in a sharp turn that has Dick pressed up close to him.

"We’ll be there soon enough," Cassandra says in a soft tone that barely carries over the noise of honking cars and shouting passerby. "Maybe you should wear your seatbelt if you’re worried about sliding all over the place." She raises one eyebrow at Bruce and Dick, conveying a weighty amount of language with her gaze and then returns her attention to the road.

Dick laughs and carefully extricates himself from Bruce’s grip, inching over to the other side of the car; glancing up at him as though he’s trying not to get caught doing so.

"You never said who we were going to meet," Dick says as he fixes his seatbelt with a quick motion of his graceful hands. "This is supposed to be the  _good_ part of town."

Looking around outside the car window, Bruce notices the change from dark and dreary downtown Gotham City to the brighter open spaces of the upper class neighborhoods. Where they’re headed there are few dark spaces but even more secrets than what plagues the people of Park Row.

"We’re going to see Harvey Dent, Gotham's DA," Bruce says as he watches neatly maintained lawns and bushes fly by as the car speeds along the wide streets of the sprawling community where his oldest friend apparently lives. "I think he may be able to help."

They drive past several mansions that all look the same. Just when Bruce is getting tired of seeing the same houses in different shades of beige, Cassandra pulls the car up to a stop in front of an ornate black gate.

Cassandra taps the button that rolls the driver’s side window down and leans over so that she can reach the intercom system jutting out of the wall holding the gate upright.

"Bruce Wayne here to see Harvey Dent," she says with a smile on her face, youthful glee infusing her every being. Cassandra is happy to be out of the hotel room and Bruce feels a pang of regret for how he’s had his two closest subordinates practically locked up inside the hotel room for the past few days.

He’ll have to make it up to them… somehow.

There’s a crackle of static, then a soft, sweet voice comes over through the speakers. "Drive up to the main house," a woman says in a light tone, "Someone will be down to let you inside."

As the gate swings open Cassandra steps on the gas, sending their rental car jolting forward over a paved road that leads up a hill and to a mansion bigger than any of the others in the neighborhood. She takes the road as though it’s about to fight back, driving so aggressively she’s might as well be on a drag racing course instead of an upper-class driveway.

"Cassandra," Bruce says as he tries to pretend as though he isn’t worried about getting into an accident on Harvey’s front lawn of all places. "Are you  _trying_ to get security called?" At the sound of Cassandra’s tinkling laughter surging above the purr of the engine as she pulls up in front of the mansion with its sweeping staircase, Bruce has to stifle laughter of his own.

When Bruce looks over at Dick, he isn’t surprised to see his charge clutching at the handle of the door with white knuckles.

"Are you alright?" Bruce asks as he reaches out to touch the side of Dick’s knee. Dick makes a face at Bruce, but doesn’t ask the older man to move his hand away as the car pulls to a stop.  "We’re here."

Harvey certainly has moved up in the world, Bruce thinks to himself once he gets out of the car and finds himself staring up at his former best friend’s massive house.

There’s hardly any sign of the same boy that used to ride the buses with Bruce in the early mornings before school or the young man that made the rooms above Leslie’s clinic a second home when they were making their place in the world. There's barely any sign of the man that Bruce had cared for so strongly.

Harvey’s mansion is like something outside of a magazine, all sweeping green grass and Roman columns stretching up to the roof. Bruce can hardly equate it with the boy that he had grown up with or the man that he had cared for so strongly.

The front doors swing open when Bruce and Dick are halfway up the stairs and Harvey steps out onto the front porch. Looking sharp in a suit and tie, he looks every inch the successful DA and Bruce is torn

"You look like you haven’t aged a day," Harvey says as he comes down to meet Bruce halfway with his arms outstretched to pull Bruce in for an embrace.

Up close, it’s the same Harvey with a deeper than usual tan and smile lines in the brown skin around his smiling blue eyes.

Bruce can smell the cologne that was his first gift to Harvey when they started making actual money and he feels his nostrils flare as the scent memory threatens to overwhelm him. He spares a thought for Dick and how it must appear but then Bruce winds up swept up in Harvey’s warmth and his considerable charm. He’s awash with the memory of what it feels like to be this close to someone he cares for.

It’s been a long seven years...

"You look good too, Harvey," Bruce says when Harvey finally lets him go and steps back so that they’re no longer pressed chest to chest. "I’m sorry that it’s taken so long--"

Harvey cuts Bruce off with an imperious wave of one hand.

"Don’t worry about it, Bruce. I knew you’d come back when you were ready," he says, smiling. Harvey’s gaze slides over to Dick where the other man is standing behind Bruce.

Something in Harvey's smile changes; sharpens to a fine point akin to a weapon. "Who’s your little friend?"

It feels strange, more like Bruce is introducing two of his past loves instead of a close friend and his charge, but he ushers Dick forward to stand beside him on the steps.

"I’m sure you know Dick Grayson," Bruce says as he rests his hand just above the waistband of Dick’s slacks and tries to convey some sort of comfort in that gesture. "Dick, this is Harvey Dent, my oldest friend and--"

"The reason why your man is even  _remotely_ worldly," Harvey says, cutting in with a shark-like smile on his face as he reaches out to take one of Dick’s hands and pump it in a firm grip. "You should be thanking me for bringing Brucie out of his shell." He lingers, holding Dick’s hand in his own far longer than most people would deem proper, then releasing it in favor of smiling at the two of them.

"Why don’t you both come inside," Harvey offers, "We can have drinks and catch up. If you don’t mind me telling your boyfriend all of your secrets that is..."

Bruce blinks over at Harvey, mind drawing a blank for a second as he tries to understand exactly what the other man is suggesting.

"B-boyfriend," Bruce repeats as he carefully avoids meeting Dick’s bright eyes. "We’re not dating, Harv. I just work security for his company--"

Harvey shakes his head and smiles as though he’s playing along with some huge joke.

"Sure you do, Bruce. Sure you do."

Dick speaks up.

"I’m sorry," he says as he glances back and forth between Harvey and Bruce as though the older men aren’t speaking a language that he understands. "What are you two talking about?" He bites at his bottom lip with even white teeth and looks at Bruce with a silent question gleaming in his brilliant blue eyes.

Bruce has to make himself look away from Dick’s face in favor of meeting Harvey’s smug gaze.

"We’ll come in for a few minutes," Bruce says in a decisive way as if he can’t see the worry in Dick’s eyes. "I need to talk to you and we can’t do that outside."

In a breath, Harvey seems to change from an unctuous caricature of himself into the perfect host. He leads Bruce and Dick up the stairs into the front of the house and then shuts the door behind them, leaving it unlocked.

"Don’t mind the mess, boys," Harvey says as he waves a hand around the foyer of his big house. "Gilda gave most of the staff the rest of the week off. Except for the cook, we’re roughing it."

The Harvey that Bruce had known wouldn’t have been able to say any part of that sentence with a straight face. He would have smirked and said something truly glib about how he can clean for himself. And this Gilda--

"You’re married," Bruce says. It comes out in an accusatory tone as they follow Harvey down one of the long hallways in his home. "Why didn’t you tell me that you got married?"

There are pictures of Harvey and his wife Gilda on every surface, pictures of Harvey’s white teeth smiling out of a brown face and his wife’s little body tucked up underneath one arm. There's even a massive portrait of the two posing with the best man and maid of honor on their wedding day and Bruce finds himself feeling--

Behind the times.

Jealous that Harvey has moved on and moved  _far_  while he’s reduced to eying his charge; knowing that making any move on Dick can be grounds for Selina to have his head.

Bruce looks closely at the portrait, squinting and then frowning when he recognizes the man standing at Harvey's side as the bane of their adolescence, one Thomas Elliot.

" _Elliot_ was your best man?" The words come out with far more bitterness than Bruce wants them to. "Thomas Elliot? What --"

Harvey turns his head and looks at Bruce with a small, tight smile on his face.

"That was three years ago, Bruce," he says with this half-smile twisting up the corners of his mouth. "You were in Paris with that heiress and at the time. I didn’t have a number to reach you unless I wanted to go through Selina." Here Harvey makes a face as he makes to lead them into the house's library. "And believe me; I didn’t  _want_  to go through Selina only to have you shut me down. Tommy was more than happy to be my best man."

Harvey shrugs, looking for all the world as though it's normal to have their high school bully serving as his best man. "Besides, Bruce, don't you think it's time for you to let go of those old grudges? It's been almost twenty years, man."

He isn't wrong, Bruce thinks to himself, but this also isn't Harvey. Not the Harvey that Bruce knows -- knew -- that would have laughed himself sick at the idea of having Thomas Elliot as his best man.

Bruce frowns and then tries to blank his face before Dick or Harvey notice the unhappy twist to his mouth.

"You have a point, Harv. It's all in the past anyway," he says, "I’m here to talk to you about the present, Harvey. We have a problem and you’re the first person I could think of--"

"Don’t worry," Harvey says to Bruce with that same smile on his face. "I’ve heard about your little problem. Selina called to make sure that I knew you were in town and she couldn’t help but drop a few hints."

Harvey turns to Dick with a charming politician's smile settled firmly on his face.

"I was one of the ADAs working in Gotham during your parents’ case. I only knew them for a short time before their deaths, but they were going to make Gotham great again. I know it’s late coming, but I’m sorry for your loss. They were good people."

Dick turns his head, neatly avoiding Harvey’s gaze, and shrugs.

"It was a long time ago," he mutters underneath his breath. "I don’t want to talk about it."

Dick’s eyebrows draw down together and he scowls down at his feet as they stand just inside the entrance to the library. He looks upset and Bruce wants more than anything to reach out and just  _touch_  Dick to let him know that he’s not alone. Even with Harvey standing there, judging them both, all Bruce wants to do is actually move forward and take Dick’s hand or touch the dip of his spine. He wants to do  _something_.

Moving before he realizes that he’s even given it a second thought, Bruce reaches out and runs his fingers along the back of Dick’s arm, skimming his fingers over the bend of his elbow. He does it slow enough that there’s a chance that Harvey will miss it, trying to convey as much comfort and security through that touch as he can manage.

"We’re not here to talk about the past, Harvey," Bruce says with more than a hint of warning in his voice. "Someone is trying to kill Dick  _now_  and we need your help finding out who’s behind it. Can you help or should I go try someone else?"

Bruce firms his mouth and hardens the tone of his voice until it’s almost as sharp as a blade to be wielded. "I came to you because you’re my friend and you can ask the questions that I can’t, but if you’re just going to bring up old wounds, Harv--"

Harvey holds his hands up in surrender.

"Whoa, Bruce," he says, "I was just trying to be friendly. If you need me to help your little boyfriend, I will."

He ignores the way that Dick bristles at the ‘little boyfriend’ comment and turns that billion-watt smile back on Bruce. "You’re in luck; I have a few friends still on the force. They’ve given me files and some other documents that might be able to help you out."

"Where are they?" Bruce asks, still holding on to Dick’s arm.

Harvey leans back against the doorway and makes no attempt to hide how he’s looking over their bodies and judging their positioning.

"What did you find out? Can I take them back with me?" Bruce fires questions one after the other until he feels as though he is a once-loaded gun and Harvey should be bullet-riddled.

"Do you know who’s been trying to kill me?" Dick asks, stepping forward and drawing Harvey’s attention by virtue of no longer hiding behind Bruce’s bigger body. "Is that’s what’s in those files?" He frowns and the skin around his mouth tightens as he looks up at Harvey. "If you have proof that someone’s after me, why didn’t you say something to Bruce earlier?"

Bruce notices something off about Harvey. He watches as Harvey presses his lips together until they’re thin lines in his face and gives Dick a look akin to one that someone might use after stepping in something particularly awful. It’s a terrible look and it’s one that Bruce remembers seeing on Harvey’s face only a few times before.

It’s the look that usually prefaced Harvey swinging first in a fight. It’s the look that started dozens of snide remarks in the hallways of their high school.

"I don’t owe you an explanation," Harvey says (and there Bruce relaxes a bit because it’s far milder than what he was expecting to hear). "I’m giving the information to Bruce  _now_. That’s all that matters."

Dick narrows his eyes and frowns at Harvey.

"I want to see the files," he announces, wrenching his arm away from Bruce’s grip and rising up to his full height. Dick looks at Harvey without flinching, almost as though he’s daring the older man to try something. "They’re about me after all and I want to know what  _you_  can do to help me. Or if you even want to help me."

"I want to help  _Bruce_ ," Harvey says softly. "The files are for him." There’s a sidelong glance he cast at Dick and then Harvey gestures at the door with an imperious wave of one hand, saying "I’d like to talk to you alone, Bruce."

Dick narrows his eyes at Harvey, but walks out of the room without so much of a backwards glance at the DA and Bruce. His shoulders are tense and Bruce winces internally, feeling anger at himself for not interjecting on his charge’s behalf.

"Dick, I--"

"I’ll be outside, Bruce."

\----------------

Somehow, Dick manages to get lost in Harvey Dent’s mansion.

Thinking that the front door wasn’t too far away from the library does Dick no good. He winds up in a sunlit room on the first floor with no idea how to get back to the front door or to the little library where he had left Bruce and Harvey. It’s a sitting room of some kind, filled with the kind of expensive furniture that his own parents despised but Tim’s parents loved, and Dick gravitates to a low loveseat with mahogany wood and deep blue fabric covering its cushions. He sits on the edge of the little couch and nearly sinks in to his hips before he can manage to get in a comfortable position to wait.

Bruce will find him… eventually.

Dick knows that feeling bitter is the most immature thing that he can do (short of storming out and waiting in the car while Cassandra silently emotes at him.) But there’s something about the way that Harvey looks at him -- at _Bruce_ \-- that makes him uneasy. There’s something about Harvey in general…

"You must be one of Harvey’s friends," a soft, sweet voice says from close by, causing Dick to jump and almost slide off of the love seat. When he turns around, he sees her, a light-skinned woman with short black hair and small mouth turned up into a welcoming smile. "Would you like something to drink while you wait for him to finish up?"

"You must be Harvey's wife," Dick says, standing up and dusting off his knees as he looks Harvey's wife over from underneath his eyelashes as not to appear as though he's  _leering_  at her in her own home.

Gilda Dent is tiny and well put together, the perfect wife for a District Attorney, or so Dick thinks as he watches her fluff out her long blue skirt and smile. In another world, she might have even been friends with Dick's mother or a host of parties that the Drakes attended on a regular basis.

In this world however, Dick is still smarting from Harvey's dismissal of him and Bruce's silence in the matter. He pastes a smile on his face that feels fake and most likely looks plastic and rigid.

"I'm Dick and I'd love to have a drink. What do you have?"

Gilda fists her fingers in the front of her voluminous skirt and smiles, as shy and as sweet as sugar.

"The kitchen is in the back of the house," she says after a moment, turning to smile at Dick, "I'm sure the cook has some fresh made ice tea. You can have some while you wait for Harvey and his other friend." She walks down the hallway with her skirt swishing and flaring around her knees, trusting that Dick will be following after her. "I'd be happy to keep you company if you don't mind."

Dick only has to lengthen his stride by a small amount in order to catch up with Gilda. "Thank you, Mrs. Dent," he says, feeling a bit of fondness for the slight young woman with her bright eyes and her strange husband. "I'd appreciate any company that keeps me from going out to terrorize our driver."

He stuffs one hand in his jacket pocket and sighs, feeling clunky and out of place in the art-covered hallways of the Dents' mansion home.

Even with the amount of money that running Haly's Circus had netted them, Dick's parents never lived like this. Hell, Tim’s parents never lived like this and they were part of Gotham high society.

Looking around the hallways --brighter than the one that had led to the library where Bruce is probably still holed up with Harvey-- Dick casts about for a question that he can ask of Gilda that isn't invasive.

"Were you born in Gotham?" Dick asks, managing not to stammer by sheer force of willpower. "You seem to have decorated the house in a perfect style for the city. It looks lovely."

Empty conversation, that's all that Dick can come up with as he follows Gilda down the hallway that is framed by bright landscapes and vases filled with cut flowers.

 Gilda gives Dick an answer to every one of his questions about their huge home, saying something about how she was born in Gotham but raised elsewhere. Gilda mentions that this is very different from their first apartment in downtown Gotham when they were first dating.

Then before Dick can manage to stammer out another painfully bland sentence, they're in the kitchen.

For all that the cook is supposed to be the only one working in the mansion, the kitchen is empty. It looks like a futuristic set up, stainless steel and sleek black panels on every surface that the eye can see. On the counter are a bowl of fruit and a pitcher of some dark liquid --the aforementioned iced tea, Dick presumes-- and Gilda marches towards it with a staccato clicking of her heels against the tile.

"Do you take your tea with sugar?" Gilda asks, already reaching for a small sugar bowl hidden under an overhang of counter. "I'm sure we have some sorts of snacks around here too if you're hungry."

Dick shakes his head and keeps smiling. "I don't want to make you go out of your way," he insists, leaning against the counter as he watches Gilda bustle around the spacious kitchen in search of cups. "I just had breakfast and--"

"There's always room for cookies," Gilda announces in a matter of fact tone. She reaches for a covered plate and uncovers it in order to reveal a plate of cookies that smell absolutely divine even though Dick should still be full from breakfast. "Our cook makes them fresh every day. Are you sure that you don't want one?"

Balancing the plate in one hand and the cups in the other, Gilda makes her way back across the kitchen and sets her cargo down on the top of the counter with a clatter. She makes it look easy and for a second, Dick finds himself thinking. He finds himself wondering how,  _why_  this bright young woman is so in love with Harvey.

Dick kills the thought mercilessly and reaches for one of the cookies. They're still warm to the touch and moist. When he lifts the cookie to his mouth and takes a bite, the sweet sugary treat seems to melt on his tongue and Dick almost moans --almost-- for the taste of dark chocolate and peanut butter bursting on his tongue. They're the best cookies that Dick has ever had before in his  _life_. He finishes the cookie in several short bites, all but licking his fingers to get the last of the taste off of his fingers. When he looks up at Gilda, she's smiling at him.

"Do you like the cookies?"

"Of course I do," Dick says, laughing a bit for the sheer absurdity of it all.

Somewhere in Gotham is a person who's been doing their level best to harass Dick and run him out of town and here he is, having tea and cookies with the wife of his bodyguard's former lover (because there's no way for him to put off thinking about that painfully obvious truth any longer). He should be at home hashing out more contracts to send to suppliers or writing some kind of publicity for their press release to come.

He should be with Bruce--

Dick mentally swats himself on the hand and gives Gilda another smile, a real smile-- "Is there any way that I can get the recipe?"

Gilda laughs, voice lifting high and sharp in the silence of the kitchen, and gently touches Dick’s arm.

"If I can find Matilda before you have to leave, I’ll be sure to get the recipe from her for you." She smiles up at Dick and it’s such a bright smile that he starts to feel somewhat… at home in the huge mansion and a little more at ease about leaving Bruce alone with Harvey.

They talk for a several minutes after that, chattering about everyday nonsense and making small talk as Dick alternates between taking sips of sweet tea and nibbling on the edge of another cookie. Soon though, Dick runs out of polite questions that he can ask--

"You and Harvey have been married for a while, do you have any children?" The moment that the question leaves Dick’s mouth, he regrets it.

"Ah… No," Gilda says, looking away from Dick’s eyes and focusing on the plate of cookies between them so that she doesn’t have to meet his gaze. "Harvey and I-- Harvey and I don’t have children yet."

Gilda delivers the information in a tone that would almost seem to be neutral if not for the way that Dick can see a minute trembling in the woman’s skin near her made up mouth. She taps her surprisingly unkempt nails against the counter top to break up the uncomfortable silence that bubbles up between them. She frowns, looking as though she wants the conversation to end by any means necessary.

This time, Gilda is the one that changes the conversation, grasping at straws and sentence fragments until she comes up with something else, a way to change the conversation and turn it away from her personal life.

"How long have you and Bruce been together?" Gilda asks just as Dick lifts his glass and gulps down a mouthful of cool tea. "Harvey talks about him all of the time, but this is the first time that he’s come visiting. And Harvey never mentioned that he was well…  _gay_."

Gilda whispers the last word in her sentence as though it’s a dirty word and her cheeks burn red in the light beaming down on their heads.

Dick frowns and bites his tongue.

He wants to tell Gilda… several things actually: that it’s none of her business; that he isn’t gay (and,  _obviously_ , neither are Bruce and Harvey); that he and Bruce are only friends. Instead, Dick gives what he hopes is a neutral answer of his own.

"Not very long," he says and it’s technically not a lie. "He’s friends with my little brother’s godmother. You know how that is…"

Gilda smiles and opens her mouth to say something but then she looks over Dick’s shoulder and her eyes get wide as her mouth puckers up in a little O-shape.

 "Oh," she calls out, "We were just talking about you, Bruce."

Gilda moves around the counter, holding the plate of cookies up in offering as Bruce and Harvey step into the kitchen. "Would you like a cookie?"

Bruce shakes his head and says "No, thank you" in a low voice.

His face is guarded, pinched in a way that makes Dick wonder exactly what he and Harvey had gotten up to behind closed doors, and his thick fingers are white-knuckled around a big brown box cradled carefully in his arms.

"Dick and I have to leave if we’re going to get any work done." A muscle jumps near the corner of Bruce’s wide mouth and when he glances over at where Harvey is leaning in the nearby doorway, he gives his friend a narrow eyed look.

Dick  _really_  wants to know the story behind that kind of look, but instead of asking, he straightens up and starts to walk across the kitchen floor towards Bruce. He can be nosy later. For now, there’s something about Harvey Dent and his beautiful wife that has him on edge. "It was nice meeting you, Gilda."

"You should come visit some time," Gilda says, beaming at Dick as though their previous conversation wasn’t stilted and about to devolve into a painfully awkward silence. "I’ll try and get that recipe for you when you come by again."

Bruce takes Dick’s arm in a firm grip and pulls him past Harvey, barely stopping to incline his head at his friend.

"I’m looking forward to seeing your show on opening night," Harvey calls out as Bruce shepherds Dick in the direction of the front door. "Hopefully, Bruce will still have you in one piece by then."

Bruce doesn’t let Dick get a chance to respond.

\----------

Once they’re back in the car and Cassandra is pulling away to go back down the driveway, Dick turns to Bruce with the demand for answers practically vibrating on his tongue. "What was  _that_ about?"

Bruce firms his mouth again and avoids meeting Dick’s eyes. "I think that this was a mistake," he admits after a second of silence aside from the purr of the engine and pop music coming from the radio. "Harvey is… different now. I should have asked Selina what she thought of him before calling him myself."

"At least he gave you information," Dick points out, trying to be helpful.

It doesn’t work and Bruce merely frowns.

"Let’s just hope it’s usable information."


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slowly, the plot thickens as the past comes back to bite everyone in the behind. 
> 
> Kory and Barbara bring news for Dick, most of it bad, while Selina brings along someone whose presence shakes Bruce to his very core. With secrets flying all over and no one very happy to be kept in the dark for even a moment longer, it's only a matter of time before things get out of hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been over seven months and here I come with a new chapter that ends in something of a cliffhanger. I am so sorry.
> 
> I can't promise that updates will resume with any regularity, but I'm working on it. Chapter eight is mostly finished and I have my outline for chapter nine ready to go. All I need to do is sit down and write everything out so my betas help me beat it into shape. Hopefully, that won't take me a year and a day to do. Keep your fingers crossed for me!
> 
> And again, major thanks goes to tumblr users [epigenetics](epigenetics.tumblr.com) and [welcometodelphi](welcometodelphi.tumblr.com) for working with me on edits and giving me excellent advice when I was flagging. Any mistakes in spelling, grammar, and/or plot are entirely mine and you should feel free to point them out to me so that I can fix them.
> 
> Thank you all for reading and for being so patient with me! I appreciate all of this!
> 
> ETA: Also: In case you're interested, I put together a [fancast photoset](http://stitchomancy.tumblr.com/post/80948477609/this-is-a-fancast-for-my-wip-tell-me-what-it) for this story a few months ago so that readers could see who I was picturing as I wrote. You don't have to click through or anything, but actor names and my reasoning are included.

The second that they get back to the hotel after leaving the wealthier parts of Gotham City and running errands around town, Dick breezes off in the direction of the master suite, saying something about getting ready for Kory’s visit even though it’s barely two in the afternoon.

A few minutes later, the sound of water pouring from the shower comes thundering out into the main part of the suite and Bruce lets out a breath of air that he hadn’t known that he had been holding back.

Bruce winds up standing in the dining room of the expansive hotel suite, clutching the box full of photocopied papers and evidence from the lockers to his chest. The box and its contents bring back memories of working cases and drinking crappy lukewarm coffee by the gallon and trying not to fall asleep at his workstation after several days of catching catnaps on the couch in the break room when going home would feel like giving up.

It also brings back other memories, of cases left unsolved and corruption thick enough to chew for breakfast.

Bruce makes a disgusted face, thankful that Dick is not there to see it and that Cassandra isn’t one to poke fun at him, and sets the box down on the table in the dining room.

“See if there are any gloves in the kit in the kitchen,” Bruce says, making no move to lift the lid off of the box even though the compulsion is almost a physical one at that point. “I don’t want to leave any prints on the things inside of the box.”

Cassandra ducks her head in a nod that makes the sleek black bob of her hair swing back and forth. She slips away, leaving Bruce alone with the box and his increasingly depressing thoughts. The sound of Cassandra rummaging through drawers in the kitchen is a welcome one and Bruce sets the box down on the table and then frowns at it as though it has offended him greatly.

Bruce wants to flip the lid off of the box and search through it until he finds the identity of whoever it is that is making Dick’s life a living hell to the point where his fingers itch from it.

He wants to call Harvey --

No --

Bruce wants to drive back to Harvey’s beautiful home in the best part of the city and shake the other man until he tells him the truth. The actual truth and not some obviously sanitized version of whatever it is that Harvey thinks he needs to hear.

To think that Harvey would look at him and, after all the years they spent together as friends and more than that besides, try to feed him some bullshit that they both know isn't the truth. Sucking his teeth, Bruce pushes all thought of his former friend aside for the moment, choosing instead to think about the case at hand.

“I have the gloves,” Cassandra says in her quiet way, speaking up from a good distance away from Bruce who feels his hands tighten around the box in instinctive response to the sudden sound of another human voice. “I also have plastic containers for the evidence. Brand new, I believe. There shouldn’t be any finger prints on them.”

Cassandra holds out the gloves first, dangling the blue nitrile from her own gloved fingers, and then waits patiently as Bruce slips them on with little effort and finally takes the lid off of the box he’s been carrying.

Cassandra spreads four containers out on top of the table and then clasps her hands as she looks at Bruce with an expectant air about her.

“Where do we start first?” Cassandra asks, looking down at the box as though it is about to bite her.

Bruce frowns down at the musty smelling evidence.

“Separate the contents into reports, physical evidence from the scene, photographs, and miscellaneous evidence.” Already reaching for the top piece of paper on the box, Bruce doesn’t even bat an eyelash at the gory crime scene photograph that he sees first and he puts it in the box closest to him. “Once everything is organized, we’ll bring the rest of the team in and start going through them.”

Cassandra nods her head and says, “Yes, Bruce,” in a soft voice as though the papers in front of them have ears to hear them talking. She reaches under Bruce’s guard and gathers up a good-sized amount of papers from the evidence box so that she can go through them. “Do you think that we’ll find answers in here?”

Bruce shrugs. “I hope so.”

They lapse into silence for several minutes, working to separate the different types of evidence into some kind of order as the shower keeps going in the master bathroom. As they work, Bruce catalogues different pieces of evidence, holding the image of them in his mind’s eye so that he’ll be able to find them easier.

Nearly a half hour later, the shower finally cuts off just as Bruce sets aside the last piece of evidence --the fingerprints that were found on a gun left at the scene of the crime-- in the bin for that type of evidence.

“It’s going to take us days to properly go through everything here,” Bruce says as Cassandra sits down at the table and frowns at the boxes. “I don’t want Dick to see any of this.”

“What do you want me to do with the boxes?” Cassandra asks, glancing in the direction of the back of the hotel suite from where the sound of Dick’s off-key singing is filtering. “Dick is curious. Just putting them away in your room won’t keep him from going through them.”

Bruce shakes his head, seeing the truth in Cassandra’s words. “There’s another safe somewhere in the suite,” he says, wracking his brain to try to remember where he had seen the second safe. “I’ll find it later. For now, put the boxes in your room. I’ll let Dick know what I can.”

Cassandra frowns and reaches for the covers for the boxes, slipping them on and shutting them tight just as the door to the master bedroom opens.

Dick pads out into the hallway half a minute later, wrapped only in a small towel held snugly around his waist by a curled up fist, and looks at Bruce.

“Do you know where the rest of the big towels are? I thought my bathroom had a stack, but as you can see...” Dick pauses to gesture at the tiny scrap of towel that barely suffices to cover his groin and when he looks up at Bruce, there is a wry smile on his face along with a brilliant and fiery blush. “I was wrong.”

“There are towels in my bathroom,” Cassandra says, speaking up when the silence threatens to choke them all. She piles the boxes of evidence up in her arms and then rushes off in the direction of her room, barely making a sound as she puts space between Bruce and Dick. “I’ll be back soon.”

Dick glances at Cassandra’s retreating back and then looks at Bruce with his eyebrows drawn tightly together. He looks curious, as if he’s finally realized something but he doesn’t have all of the answers.

“Those boxes,” Dick says, still standing in front of Bruce in that tiny scrap of terrycloth as though he knows Bruce far intimately than he does. “Those are the things from your friend the DA, aren’t they?”

Bruce inclines his head in a sharp nod that puts him looking at Dick’s stomach where his muscles flex with every breath and water trickles down his damp skin to soak into the top of his towel.

“Cassandra and I emptied out the box,” Bruce offers up after a moment, “My team and I will handle them after tonight.”

“Can I help?” Dick bounces a little on the balls of his feet and smiles at Bruce. “Tim does most of my filing, but I swear I know how to look for information on tiny pieces of paper.”

“I can’t do that, Dick,” Bruce says in as kindly a tone as he can manage when the only thoughts in his head are decidedly… uncharitable towards his charge. “We don’t want your fingerprints on the evidence and until I go through everything, I don’t know what I can let you see.”

Dick narrows his eyes and gives Bruce a glare that would seem far more effective if not for his current state of undress.

“They’re my parents’ case files,” Dick points out, fingers balling up into fists as he stares at Bruce with his jaw hanging slack. “You can’t keep them from me. What if there’s something that only I would recognize?”

Bruce opens his mouth to give Dick some kind of answer, but the words dry up on the tip of his tongue when the younger man scowls at him.

“I only had one extra towel,” Cassandra says, walking back into the dining room with a folded towel held in her hands. “It’s not very big though.”

The younger woman’s timing is impeccable and Bruce finds himself releasing a pent up breath of air as he slumps in his chair and watches as Cassandra presses the towel into Dick’s hands.

“You should go dry off and put on clothes.”

It only takes one second of Dick looking down into Cassandra’s dark eyes before the other man walks off, leaving without fully registering his complaint with Bruce. The door to the master bedroom closes with a slam and then, several seconds later, so does the door to the bathroom.

Bruce doesn’t have to be looking at Cassandra to sense the way that the young woman is frowning at him.

“You made him angry,” Cassandra says, standing still in the hallway that leads to the rest of the bedrooms in the hotel suite. “I know… I know that you don’t want to hurt Dick, but is keeping this information from him something that you really want to do?” There’s a sound of rustling fabric and Bruce knows without looking that Cassandra has crossed her arms over her chest. “He’s not going to trust you if you keep secrets from him.”

“I don’t want let him get hurt, Cassandra,” Bruce says, telling himself that the earnestness in his voice is because he wants to be a good bodyguard and not because he can’t stop himself from already harboring feelings of fondness towards the younger man that’s supposed to be his charge. “You saw what was in that box.”

There’s a moment of tense silence stretching taut between them.

Just when Bruce thinks that he’s said something truly terrible, Cassandra speaks up.

“I know what you’re trying to do, Bruce,” she says, keeping her voice low, “But if you want Dick to trust you to protect him, you have to trust that he can handle the truth when you have it.”

Bruce sighs and rubs his fingers over the top of the table.

“You’re right,” Bruce says, half muttering the words under his breath. “There should be something in all of those papers that will be able to help us keep Dick safe. He might just be the only person able to see what it is. When Jason gets back, we’ll go through the evidence and then show what we’ve found to Dick after we deal with his friends.”

“What about Tim?” Cassandra asks.

Thinking of Dick’s younger brother reminds Bruce of the fact that he can’t just expect the teenager to go play in his room while the adults talk. Tim is part of the case and he’s one of Bruce’s charges as well. He deserves to know what’s going on. Bruce sighs and lifts a hand to his forehead so that he can rub at the space between his eyebrows. He can already feel a headache brewing, just the sort of that that Bruce doesn't need at all. “He needs to be involved in this too. I keep forgetting to involve him, don't I?”

Cassandra nods her head.

“Yes, sir,” she says promptly as a hint of amusement slips into her low voice, “You should work on that."

Bruce frowns.

“This isn’t going to go well at all,” Bruce says as the sound of Cassandra’s footsteps come closer until he knows that she’s standing beside him. A small hand touches his bicep gently, Cassandra's fingers patting his arm. The touch is instantly comforting. “I’m not looking forward to this at all.”

Bruce shakes his head and casts a look in the direction of the master suite of rooms. “I’m going down to the gym to burn off some energy. I’ll have my phone and a radio with me if anything happens.”

“Everything will be fine, Bruce,” Cassandra insists, smiling as though Bruce isn’t trying his best to make a strategic retreat before Dick comes back out into the dining room. “Anissa and Grace will be here shortly and I used a secure connection to inform David about the evidence so that he can come for everything once he touches down in the city. I can have someone call you when Miss Kory and the others get here.”

_The others?_

Bruce blinks down at Cassandra for several moments before he’s able to speak.

“What others?”

Cassandra doesn’t make Bruce wait very long for an answer.

“Miss Selina and a friend,” she offers up as Bruce starts to head towards his room in the suite, “It’s apparently an important friend.”

\-------------

“Uncle Dick! Uncle Dick!”

As soon as Cassandra opens the door for Dick’s guests, Selina Kyle steps aside and her three-year-old daughter comes rushing into the hotel room on booted feet.

Helena is almost three feet tall of energy and she runs through the hotel room as though she’s always lived there, long black pigtails streaming behind her head as she races around the furniture in order to get to Dick. She bounces on the tips of her toes and then reaches up for Dick with her fingers flexing.

“Pick me up,” Helena demands of her godfather and then giggles when the older man crouches down to pick her up.

Dick laughs and then sweeps Helena up into his arms, cuddling her close and kissing her on one sticky cheek.

Up close, Helena smells like candy and Selina’s favorite perfume. She sweeps her fingers through Dick’s hair, messing the strands up and causing Dick’s hair to stick up all over the place, and then smacks her lips against Dick’s cheeks in a loud, _wet_ kiss.

“Where’s Tim?” Helena asks, looking around for her second favorite uncle. “I want Tim.” She wiggles in Dick’s arms for a few seconds as she tries to get her best look around the hotel suite but then settles down once Cassandra has the door closed behind the rest of Dick’s guests.

Turning around to face the rest of the living room, Dick smiles as he takes in the way that his guests have arranged themselves on the various pieces of furniture scattered around the hotel suite.

Barbara is sitting in her wheelchair, peering at the other people in the room --Cassandra in particular-- as though she’s measuring their moral weight. Kory is literally lounging on the couch next to where Barbara’s wheelchair is resting, the hem of her purple dress rucking up so that her tanned thighs form a contrast against the warm brown furniture. She looks as though she’s perfectly at home in Dick’s temporary home and Dick smiles as he watches her curl her fingers against the arm of the couch when she stretches.

And Selina--

“Helena missed you,” Selina says with a sly smile as she pours herself into the leather armchair that is a focal point of the room (and the only chair that also happens to have a direct line of sight to the front door). “When are you going to come visit us again? Helena was having so much fun learning gymnastics moves from you.”

At the mention of gymnastics, Helena kicks against Dick’s grip until her godfather sets her down on the floor.

She squeals, high-pitched and happy, and then tries to do a little trick. Instead of completing her cartwheels successfully, Helena takes a spill. The toddler tumbles head over heels over the carpet and lands on her back on the plush carpet.

There’s a second of intense silence as the entire room of adults stare at Helena’s still form and then the sound of childish giggles filter through the air as Helena rolls over onto her stomach and kicks her legs.

Dick swoops down and holds his goddaughter close, kissing her cheeks and forehead as peals of giggles erupt from Helena’s chest.

“I guess you’re a little bit rusty aren’t you,” Dick says as he takes Helena over to her mother and drops the squealing little girl in Selina’s lap before he turns and walks over to take a seat on the side of the couch next to Kory’s bare feet. “I suppose I can give you a refresher course…”

Helena claps her hands together and smiles up at Dick, big blue eyes sparkling with happiness. “Thank you, Uncle Dick!”

When Barbara clears her throat, all eyes turn to her.

“I hate to interrupt, but we do have things to talk about,” she says as she steeples her fingers underneath her chin. “Kory found some things out about the case that I feel as though you should know.” Barbara glances around the room as though she thinks that she’s somehow missed something in the brightly lit room. “Where is Bruce?”

Dick shrugs, but Cassandra interjects.

“Bruce is downstairs in the gym,” Cassandra offers up with a small smile and a twitch of her fingers towards the walkie-talkie at her waist that Dick has only seen the young woman use a few times in the past few days and never to get into contact with Bruce. “I could go get him if you want him to be here for this since Anissa and Grace are somewhere in the suite. Alternatively, I could call him. He usually keeps his phone on when he goes to the gym.”

Selina says, “That isn’t necessary,” at the same time that Dick goes, “Could you, Cass?”

Cassandra freezes, fingers hovering over the walkie-talkie. She looks back and forth between Dick and Selina, torn between answering to the woman paying for her services as a guard and the person that she’s supposed to be guarding. Her big black eyes go wide and she frowns with a slight tensing around her mouth.

“If this is a conversation about Dick’s safety, I think that Bruce should be here.”

Dick looks over at Selina, silently wondering what the older woman is trying to pull.

“Then Tim should be here too,” he says in a firm tone. Dick glances down at his watch and then looks back at Selina. “He got out of class an hour ago. He’ll be home any minute now so we can wait.”

No sooner than Dick finishes his sentence, does the door swing open and Bruce walks in.

Moreover, he’s not alone.

“Tim,” Helena screeches at the top of her lungs when she catches sight of the teenager standing just behind Bruce’s big body with Jason bringing up the rear.

She wriggles out of Selina’s lap and then races for the front door, heading straight for Tim as he and Jason try to get the door closed and locked behind them. She repeats Tim’s name loudly, practically screaming it out as she races towards him.

“Uncle Tim!”

Dick settles back in his chair and tries not to stare too openly at the scene in front of him. Tim looks cute with kids, always has and always will. Helena is no exception and Dick feels this warm feeling in his chest as Helena cuddles Tim’s cheeks and makes happy noises at him. And then, Dick’s gaze drifts over to where Bruce is standing in a little off to the side and his breath catches in his throat.

Bruce’s face is blank except for his eyes. As he looks at where Tim is playing with Helena, there’s tension visible in Bruce’s big body. The set of his shoulders, the firm twist to his mouth. Everything about Bruce in this moment leaves more questions than it answers and Dick wants to ask--

“Selina.” The sound of Selina’s name coming out of Bruce mouth like this, so… so empty of emotion, makes Dick flinch and when he looks over at Selina from underneath his eyelashes, the other woman’s face is pale underneath her carefully applied makeup and she isn’t meeting Bruce’s eyes.

Bruce takes a step forward.

“You told me that you were fine,” he says in a low voice, “You told me that you didn’t need me.” He frowns until it looks painful. “When were you going to tell me about my _daughter_ ,” Bruce asks, spitting the words out as Selina just sits there and looks at him with her hands folded in her lap.

Dick doesn’t know _what_ to think.

It’s none of his business what Bruce gets up to, or so he tells himself as he looks at everyone else except for Bruce and Selina. Tim is still playing with Helena near the front door, but when he catches Dick’s eye over the top of the little girl’s head, there’s a mild worry there. Barbara looks absolutely unaffected by this turn of events, but Kory seems just as confused as Dick feels.

“We should take this somewhere more private,” Selina says, standing up and dusting off the front of her skirt in a smooth gesture that barely hides the way that her fingers are shaking against the sleek black fabric. “If we’re going to have this conversation now, I want to do it somewhere else.”

Bruce bares his teeth in a snarl that makes Dick’s heart skip a beat in his chest and then jerks his head in the direction of the hallway that stretches back in the opposite direction of the master bedroom.

“Fine,” Bruce bites out, visibly upset. “You can explain everything in there. My team can stay out here while you explain this secret. Who knows what else you've been hiding from me”

Selina looks at where Helena is currently climbing all over Tim and then moves to follow Bruce out of the room. She holds her head high and her severe posture combined with the look on her face makes her seem somehow sharper.

“This can’t take too long,” she says just loud enough for the others to hear. “Kory has news to share.”

When Bruce speaks, his voice is a hard-edged sound that is audible even with the way that Tim pitches his voice high on purpose to try to distract Helena from wondering where her mother is.

“I think they can wait a few minutes,” Bruce retorts, “Right now, I think that we have more important things to talk about, Selina.”

A minute later, there’s the sound of one of the bedroom doors in the suite slamming shut and Dick shares a look with Tim as the living room falls into silence.

Out of all of the people in the room, Barbara is the only one that doesn't look even the slightest bit surprised at the revelation. She's sitting back in her chair with her fingers pressed against her stomach and behind her glasses, there's a glint of some kind of emotion. Dick has seen a look like that many times before on her face, a look that screams, "I was right."

Smug satisfaction quirks up the right side of Barbara's mouth and while she's not outright _beaming_ with glee, there's a sense of it that Dick can't manage to ignore.

"How long have you known that Bruce was Helena's father?” Dick asks in a low voice.

Barbara shrugs.

"I had my suspicions," she admits, "Bruce was one of my father's friends when I was younger and Helena looks just like him."

"How can you tell?" Kory asks with a bit of a giggle in her voice. She sits up and swings her legs off of the couch so that she can lean forward and look at her lover. "Everyone in Gotham City seems to be related. Do you know how many people I've seen _today_ with black hair and blue eyes? I'm sure I wouldn't be able to tell you who was related to whom."

Kory sweeps her hands over her dress, pushing it down over her knees as she looks at Barbara.

"Anyway, we really should talk about what happened at the event last night. I have a gig tonight and the sooner we finish here, the sooner I can go back home and finish getting things together."

Barbara smiles and licks her lips, swiping her tongue over her bottom lip in a way that makes Dick remember what it was like when they were together. Heat blooms in Dick's chest and he can't help himself from mentally flashing back for a second, to the relationship that he had shared with Barbara. Judging from the way that Kory flushes all the way up to the tips of her ears and squirms a bit on the couch, the gesture has the same effect on her as well.

"Well," Barbara says, still smiling at Kory as though they're the only people in the room, in the whole world, "Tell Dick what you found out."

Kory stretches once like a cat, cracking her back and then making a low sound in her throat before she continues speaking. "You remember how the person logging in to go through your family's case files was supposed to be dead?"

"Yeah," Dick is quick to blurt out, "He was corrupt and he got shot years ago. What does that have to do with anything?"

Dick feels himself frown because he _knows_ this stuff already. He knows that there are major holes in the case and that someone is very obviously trying to get him spooked enough to leave the city. So what does some long-dead corrupt cop have to do with any of this?

"Bruce said the guy doesn't have anything to do with this and I believe him."

Kory has a purse that she carries with her everywhere, a big black leather bag with gold accents and dangling ornaments hanging from the straps. Dick doesn’t remember the last time that he’s seen her without it and when he sees the older woman duck down and reach for something in his bag, he wiggles in his seat as he smiles at her.

“You have something, don’t you?”

Kory’s answering smile is sharp. “Normally, they don’t allow civilians to bring cameras to these parties,” she says as she pulls a high tech digital camera and a notepad disguised as an autograph book out of the depths of her bag. “But no one is going to say no to superstar Koriand’r having a camera _or_ a little notebook. They all assume I'm doing work for a new project.”

She hands the notebook over to Dick and then waves the digital camera in Tim’s direction until the teenager takes the hint and kneewalks over the carpet while still holding onto Helena’s small hand.

“I took pictures of the party and then when I got a chance, I had a friend copy over the security footage from the evidence lockers along with some files from her computer.”

Barbara gets a sly look on her face and when she asks, “Would that _friend_ happen to be Officer Montoya by any chance,” Kory’s face lights up with a blush.

“I didn’t want to ask your father to do it,” Kory says with a wave of her hand, “And Renee _wanted_ to help. She’s been seeing some things going wrong with the department, with the whole corrupted system and when I told her that we were looking for some specific information, she volunteered to help.”

Tim interjects before Barbara and Kory can really get going and amp up the flirtation between them.

“I’ve heard of Renee Montoya,” he says as he taps the camera against his bottom lip. “What’s a good cop like her doing, giving information like this to a perfect stranger?”

“I may have mentioned Bruce’s name while we were talking,” Kory admits with a shrug of her broad shoulders. “She was a rookie cop when he was on the force and she thought of him as one of her heroes. Commissioner Gordon mentioned it when we were having dinner at her house last week.”

Barbara’s answering smile is fiercely proud and she beams at her lover. “You’re turning out to be quite the detective, Kory,” she says in response to Kory’s revelations. “And you managed to get Renee to help us out without her asking too many questions. I’m proud of you.”

Tim interrupts by clearing his throat and holding up Kory’s camera until Dick turns to loo at him and says, “I’m going to take this to my computer. I’ll have the memory card back to you in a few minutes”

As he turns to walk away, Helena makes an angry noise and flails in Tim’s general direction until he takes the hint and picks her up.

“Okay, _fine_ ,” he mutters into Helena’s curly black hair as she makes herself comfortable in his arms. “You can come with me, but don’t touch anything okay?”

“Okay!”

Jason and Grace move away from the wall on the far side of the room with a fluid motion that makes him look every inch the bodyguard that he is. The two guards follow Tim into the back of the suite, leaving Cassandra and Anissa alone with Dick and his friends.

There’s no missing the way that Barbara’s attention focuses on Dick the second that Tim is no longer in the same room as them.

“There’s something else isn’t there, Babs?” Dick asks in response to the intensity that enters Barbara’s voice as she sits regally in her chair. “Something that you two know and that you don’t want Tim to know. Spill.”

Barbara glances towards the hallway, letting her gaze linger for several moments as though she expects Tim or Bruce to come back down the hallway.

“We have fingerprints in the evidence room,” Barbara says in a low voice that practically _hums_ with tension, “Those same fingerprints were found in and on several different case files.”

“Which files?” Dick asks, even though he can guess at the answer already.

This time when Kory reaches down into her big purse, Dick thinks he knows what to expect. He takes the file folder from his best friend’s hands and flips it open, staring at the glossy photographs as a frown wrinkles his brow.

“Is this --”

Dick can’t finish his sentence, but when he tips the folder up so that Barbara can see which set of reports he’s looking at, the older woman finishes the sentence for him.

“Yes,” Barbara says, voice quiet. “That’s the scope from the gun used to kill your parents.”

Dick feels a chill rush through his body.

“I thought that they said that they never found the murder weapon,” Dick hisses, fingers clenching around the folder until the cardboard bends and threatens to crumple. “The cops had fingerprints this whole time?”

He looks up at Barbara and knows that his expression is as raw as he feels on the inside.

“They told me that they didn’t have any clues. Your father, Babs--”

Dick presses his lips together so tight that they start to hurt and then bolts up from the couch because he has to move. He has to get up off of the couch and burn off the excess energy in some way because the alternative is sitting down and feeling, remembering--

Already the hot pickling of tears starts to burn in the corners of Dick’s eyes and he blinks them away as fast as he can, willing them not to fall. He hasn’t cried in _years_. Not since the Drakes died. Not since he had to bury his second set of parents.

“Who is this man?” Dick says eventually when his tongue doesn’t feel quite so thick in his mouth and he can look at Barbara again. “Who the hell is this, this _monster_ that killed my parents? Why is he trying to run me out of town when I’ve done _nothing_ to deserve this?” Dick’s voice lifts with every single sentence until he’s not sure how he’s not screaming them out. “Why didn’t your father know about this?”

Barbara shakes her head.

“He wasn’t the commissioner back then, Dick,” she says, taking off her glasses and rubbing at her eyes with the back of one hand. “He was a regular cop back then. What was he supposed to do, look for every lead until the higher-ups fired him?”

Dick throws his hands up into the air and utters a frustrated-sounding noise.

“I just want answers, Babs,” Dick confesses, choosing to then run his fingers through his hair instead of fussing with the front of his shirt. “And if this guy has something to do with my parents’ murders, why hasn’t he brought in for questioning? What’s so special about him?”

Kory clears her throat in order to get Dick’s attention to turn to her.

“Look at the other reports, Dick,” she says in a soft tone of voice. “Look at the other photos first.”

When Dick doesn’t move fast enough for her, Kory makes an impatient gesture at the photos in the folder until Dick takes the hint and starts to flip through them.

Two pictures go by.

Then four.

Then seven and--

Dick’s fingers go slack on the file folder and it falls to the floor with pictures flying everywhere, all except for one photograph clutched between two of his fingers.

“This is the Drakes’ car,” he says as he brandishes the photo at Barbara and Kory. “This is their _car_ , Babs. What the hell are this man’s fingerprints doing on the Drakes’ car? On their _brakelines_?”

His voice starts to shake and he looks back and forth between the photograph in his hand and Barbara’s impassive face. “How long have you known that the same man killed my parents and Tim’s parents?”

Barbara closes her eyes and sucks in a breath of air before blowing it out in an explosive burst.

“I didn’t know anything for sure,” Barbara says after a few seconds of silence, “But Daddy was the commissioner then and he’s the one that brought it to my attention: every time that these finger prints show up, someone pushes them out of the way. There are dozens of cases like this, where this man’s finger prints show up where someone has died suspiciously and higher ups just… push them under the rug.”

“What are you guys talking about?” Tim’s voice reaches Dick’s ears and there’s no way that the teenager _hasn’t_ missed the important parts of the conversation. “What man? Do you know who’s been trying to get Dick to leave town?”

Dick freezes for a second that feels like an eternity and then drops to his knees in a graceful motion, gathering up the crime scene photos and stuffing them back into the folder.

“It’s nothing, Tim,” Dick insists, gritting his teeth against the guilt that bubbles up inside of his chest. “Babs just had a theory, but it doesn’t look like it’ll pan out.”

Tim takes a step into the living room, holding Kory’s camera with one hand and one of Helena’s chubby little hands in the other, and frowns at Dick.

“What are the photos from?”

“N-nothing, Tim,” Dick says, tripping over the words and hating the way that Tim’s eyes narrow with a knowing look appearing in them. “They’re nothing.”

One of Tim’s dark eyebrows lifts in a questioning frown and he scowls at Dick.

“I know that you’re lying,” he says, coming forward with Helena still grinning and holding his hand, “No one can protect you if you don’t tell them--”

Barbara holds up her right hand, cutting Tim off with the suddenness of the movement.

“You should sit down for this, Tim,” she says in a firm voice that rises above Dick’s loud complaints, “And Jason… Jason you should see if Bruce and Selina are finished talking now. They need to hear this too.”

Tim throws himself into the chair closest to the hallway, appearing the perfect picture of teenage rebellion except for the toddler clutching at the front of his worn t-shirt.

“Well?” Tim asks, “Are you going to start now or do I have to keep worrying?”

Barbara sighs and rubs at the bridge of her nose. “It’s not about Dick,” she mutters through gritted teeth, “At least… not completely. And if you don’t mind, I’m going to wait until Bruce comes out. I don’t want to tell this story again.”

“Fine,” Tim bites out, giving Dick a betrayed look that makes him look far younger than he really is. “I thought you weren’t going to try and hide things from me anymore, but I guess I was wrong.” He lets go of Helena’s hand and then rushes to the front door of the hotel suite.

Tim pauses with his hand on the doorknob and looks over his shoulder at the group of assembled adults that aren’t even _close_ to looking at his face.“If you want to keep secrets, you can. I’m going for a walk.”

Jason twitches towards the door, but Dick stops him by raising one hand.

“No,” Dick says in a low voice, “Go get Bruce and tell him that he needs to have his issues with Selina later. This is important.” Dick takes off after Tim without another word, bare feet slapping on the tile floor as he races to follow his brother wherever he has to.

Behind him, he hears Anissa's heavy footsteps thudding behind him, but he doubts that she'll make it to them before Dick catches up with his brother.

"Tim!"


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A strange man in purple gets on an elevator, interrupting Dick and Tim's fight with threats. And Selina confesses that she has another secret that she didn't consider sharing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In theory, this is still on hiatus. The bare bones of the story are complete up until chapter seventeen but it needs more work and attention than I can give to it right now. Despite considering giving up, I am picking at it at every chance that I get and working on tightening the story and fleshing out the parts that I left unfinished when I did NaNoWriMo last year. 
> 
> So thank you for being patient with me and hopefully, it won't take me another year to get Chapter 9 up.

“Tim,” Dick calls out, voice rough with emotion, “Tim, stop for a second. Please. I need to talk to you!”

Tim is already halfway down the hallway by the time that Dick wrenches the hotel door open and he doesn’t look back once. His pace picks up until it’s almost a jog and there’s a huffing noise as though Tim is fighting back saying something that he’ll regret.

Dick tries again to get his brother’s attention. “Tim, I’m sorry,” he shouts, voice catching as Tim comes to a stop in front of the elevator and jabs at the down button with his thumb. At that sight, Dick breaks out into a full sprint. His legs are longer than Tim’s own and he has run marathons before for fun. Several in fact.

There’s no way for Tim to get in the elevator before Dick reaches him.

“Leave me alone, Dick,” Tim says, voice shaking when his brother finally skids to a stop beside him. “You didn’t need to talk to me before so why--” Tim’s voice cracks, remind Dick of how young his little brother really is. “Why do you constantly try to hide things from me?”

“You’re my little brother, Timmers,” Dick says in what’s supposed to be a very brotherly tone as he reaches for Tim’s shoulder. “I don’t want you exposed to that sort of thing. I wouldn’t be a very good brother if I--”

Tim shakes his head at the same time that the elevator doors slide open with a muted whisper of air. “And who says you’re a very good brother _now_?”

Dick jerks backwards, frowning hard enough that his face starts to hurt. “Timmers--”

“Don’t call me that,” Tim hisses, finally whirling around so that he can look Dick in the eye and glare at him, “Not while you’re going around and trying to figure out this mystery without telling me what’s going on. This isn’t even the first time that you’ve done this.” Tim throws his hands up in the air in an exasperated gesture and steps backwards into the elevator. “Would you have even told me about the threats if the boxes hadn’t started coming?”

The elevator doors make to close, but Dick grits his teeth and steps into the elevator with Tim. When his little brother looks at him and says, “Get _out_ ,” in a snarling tone, Dick only frowns harder and mutters, “Like hell I will.”

When Tim hits the button for the ground floor, Dick makes a face at him. “Are you serious?”

“You’re on house arrest,” Tim mutters, “I don’t see why I need a bodyguard to walk around the hotel bar. I don’t even want to _look_ at you anymore, Dick.” He crosses his arms across his chest and stares at the glossy button panel on the elevator’s right side as though it’s the most fascinating thing in the world. “I don’t want you to follow me.”

Dick shakes his head. “I’m not giving you a choice, Tim,” he says in a firm tone, “We’re going back to the room and we’ll talk. Stop being difficult!”

Tim scowls and turns his face away from Dick’s own. “Don’t make me tell you again, Dick,” he says under his breath, “Don’t follow me when I get out of the elevator.”

They spend the rest of the ride down from the penthouse stewing in silence.

The different floors pass by in a matter of moments and soon the doors slide open to reveal the lobby. Or rather, they _would_ reveal the hotel lobby if not for the three men standing in front of the elevator. Two bulky bodyguards and their charge, a tall man with pale skin and a shock of black hair hidden underneath a purple fedora, block their exit from the elevator and Dick starts to feel the first hint that something isn’t quite right.

Dick reaches out and puts his hand on the bend of Tim’s elbow, holding him still. “Tim, don’t--”

Tim shrugs Dick’s hand off and takes a step forward, toes hovering over the metal grate that separates the elevator from the lobby floor.

He doesn’t get very far.

“Going my way, boys,” the man in the front says with a wide smile stretching his mouth until it looks unnatural. He pushes Tim into the elevator and then steps inside, whirling on his heels so that he can look at his two hangers-on. He jerks his thumb in the universal “get outta here,” gesture all the while saying, “Take the next one, boys.”

Dick looks over at where Tim has his back pressed to the wall of the elevator and frowns. “Excuse me,” he says as the man hits several buttons on the elevator button panel, “But we’re getting off.”

The man looks over at Dick. Underneath his fedora, the dark lenses of a pair of sunglasses obscure his eyes but do nothing to hide the look of disdain on his face. “No,” he says, “I don’t think you are.” He waits until the elevator doors slide shut and then turns to face Dick as the elevator. “We’re going to take a little ride.”

Dick blinks, feeling his heart race in his chest, and then flattens his back against the back of the elevator. “Who are you,” he asks, “Who sent you?”

“Ah. Ah. Ah,” the man drawls, wagging his index finger in front of Dick’s face. “I’ll be the one doing all of the talking here. Stop being rude and pay attention.” He steps back and then hits the emergency stop button with the palm of his gloved hand. “I have a message for you and I’m sure that you’ll want to hear it.”

Tim makes a soft noise over on his end of the elevator. “Wh-what? Who _are_ you?”

The man swings his head up and fixes his gaze on Tim. For a few moments, Dick is genuinely afraid for his little brother, but then the lanky stranger in the elevator with them smiles while wiggling his fingers at Tim in a casual little wave.

“Just call me Joe.”

Dick rolls his shoulders back and then stands up straighter, drawing the man’s attention back towards him. “Joe, huh,” Dick says in a low voice. “So what’s your message? Is it from anyone I know?” Dick pastes a careless smile on his face and then stuffs his hands in his pockets so that this… Joe can’t see how his fingers shake.

Joe smiles again and steps forward, almost crowding Dick against the corner of the elevator with his lanky frame and long limbs. When Tim cries out in worry, he doesn’t even turn around. Over his shoulders, Joe says, “Hush, kid. Can’t you see that grown-ups are talking?”

Tim opens his mouth and then closes it with an audible noise.

“What’s the message?” Dick can’t hide the tremor in his voice, but speaking up means that Joe is looking at him and not Tim. “Hurry up, I don’t want to spend all night in this elevator.” Dick regrets speaking almost immediately and he flinches backwards as Joe’s fetid breath reaches his nostrils when the tall man throws back his head and cackles.

“My boss didn’t tell me you were so impatient,” Joe says, sounding almost pleased, “You’ve got a mouth on you, boy.” He leans in close until his thin lips brush Dick’s ear. “But don’t think you can keep mouthing off at me. I’ve got patience plenty, but I ain’t getting paid enough to let some rich brat talk my ear off.”

Joe shakes his head and then smiles some more as he leans back, twitching fingers flying out to fix the rumpled front of Dick’s shirt. “Now where was I?” He taps his long index finger on his bottom lip and then straightens up with a jerky movement. “Oh yes! You’ve made some very powerful people _very_ unhappy. They sent me here to tell you that you’re treading on thin ice.”

Feeling a surge of wild boldness in his chest makes Dick foolhardy. He straightens up and stands taller so that he’s almost eye to eye with Joe. “I’m not afraid of them.”

“Ooh, you’re a brave one,” Joe croons, almost batting his eyelashes at Dick. He presses his gloved hands against his chest and purses his lips at Dick in a little moue before returning to looming over Dick. “But you don’t have to lie to me, Grayson; I know how you really feel. I know exactly what you’re worried about.”

Leaning back and then gesturing at where Tim stands staring at them with wide eyes, Joe continues speaking. “If I can get in your fancy hotel and keep you two busy, think about how easy it would be for me to get to your little brother when he’s out on his own.”

Dick _growls_.

“Don’t you _dare_ touch him,” he shouts, feeling his face warm with rage at the same time that his heart skips a beat in his chest. “If you touch Tim, I’ll--”

“You’ll what,” Joe drawls over his shoulder as he hits the button to start the elevator back up again, “Sic your bodyguard on me? Like I’m afraid of a has been cop. At least your parents tried to hire an actual professional to keep you safe... Wayne? Wayne doesn’t have what it takes to take me down.”

The elevator doors slide open on the fifth floor of the hotel and the two goons from earlier step aside to make space for Joe who backs out of the elevator and keeps his foot in the way just long enough so that he can remove his hat to do a flourishing bow. His smile remains in place, wide and wicked enough to make Dick flinch backwards on instinct. “I’ll be seeing you, kid.”

Tim _dives_ for the door and hits the button for the penthouse with his thumb until the elevator starts inching upward and gleaming gold replaces Joe’s smiling face.

“Who the hell was _that_?” Tim asks, slumping back against the side of the elevator as he watches Dick try to put himself back to rights. “What the hell is going on?”

Dick shakes his head once, still not looking at Tim. “Not here,” he says, “Not now. Bruce needs to hear about this and--” Dick pauses to clear his throat. “And you need to hear what Babs found out.”

“If you need me to take some time off from school, I will,” Tim offers.

“No,” Dick says in a sharp tone. Twin spots of red form on Dick’s cheeks and when he repeats his words, his voice comes out in a much lower tone. “I mean… You shouldn’t have to be scared out of school, Tim. We’ll figure something out.”

\-----

It takes Bruce all of fifteen minutes to collect his thoughts enough to even _look_ at Selina, much less speak to her in the civil tone that she demanded from him the instant that they closed the bedroom door behind them.

“Why didn’t you tell me about Helena?” Bruce asks in a subdued tone of voice, “Why didn’t you tell me that we had a daughter? I would have come back to Gotham--”

Selina shakes her head, setting her short black curls to bouncing. “I didn’t want you to come back,” she says in response, “When I found you in Paris, right before you started to work for the al Ghul family, I was missing you. I wanted you to know that you still had people that loved you.” Selina closes her eyes and feels her hands shake slightly as she brushes at the front of her skirt. “I didn’t want you to worry and I didn’t think that you’d ever come back to Gotham. I wouldn’t have come back if I had been in your position and all of those crooked cops were out for my head.”

Bruce opens his mouth and then closes it. “I would have come back for you and Helena,” he says eventually, “You should have told me, Selina. She deserves a family--”

“And she has one,” Selina says with heat entering her tone. “She has aunts and uncles that love her and she has me.” Selina crosses her arms over her chest and narrows her eyes at Bruce. “And she’s supposed to have you now, but I just don’t know about that anymore--” She rubs briskly at her biceps as though fighting off some internal chill and then fixes Bruce with a glare. “And you’re one to talk about family, Bruce. Don’t think I don’t know for a second how you’ve been dodging Leslie’s emails or about you getting entangled with the al Ghul family.”

Here at least, Bruce has the decency to duck his head and look ashamed of himself. “Talia was--”

“For christ’s sake, Bruce. I’m not serious.” Selina raises her hand to cut Bruce off before he can dig himself a deeper hole. “You don’t need to explain anything to me, Bruce,” she says, almost kindly, “What we had? That was three years ago. You _really_ don’t owe me an explanation about what you and Miss al Ghul got up to while you were overseas.”

“I should have tried to keep in touch, Selina,” Bruce says in a soft tone as he reaches to take Selina’s small brown hand in his own. “I wish-- I wish I could have known then that you were pregnant. I would have tried--”

“But you’re here now,” Selina says, interjecting as though Bruce wasn’t speaking in the first place, “You can be a part of Helena’s life .” She smiles at him and then reaches out to take his hand and squeeze it gently. “See? Wasn’t this a lot easier than having a fight where Helena could overhear us?”

Bruce cracks a small smile at that. “It was,” he admits, “Should we go back outside now?”

Selina smiles in response, white teeth flashing against the deep red of her lipstick. “Nah,” she replies with a little flip of her hair, “Let’s make everyone sweat a little.” Selina releases Bruce’s hand and then moves to sit on the edge of the bed, perching there as though she expects them to be interrupted at any minute. “I’m sure they can handle themselves for a few minutes.”

Before Bruce can even move to join Selina on his own bed, a knock on the door comes to prove her wrong.

The handle turns halfway and then Jason pokes his head in, quickly assessing the situation before opening the door all the way and stepping inside.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but we have a situation.”

“A situation?” Bruce repeats the end of Jason’s sentence as a question and frowns. “What do you mean, ‘a situation,’ Jason?”

Jason shrugs and then looks down at his feet. “Tim has um... left the suite and--”

“And _what_?” There’s more than a hint of a snarl in Bruce’s voice and only the tension on Jason’s broad shoulders keeps him from giving in to his anger. “Was he by himself? Please tell me that he wasn’t alone.”

Jason looks to the side with a deliberate little attempt to cast off the weight of Bruce’s gaze. “You’re not gonna like this, boss,” Jason says, “The only reason that Tim’s not alone is because Dick ran out after him.”

Bruce feels a throbbing pain start up behind his eyes. “I’m sorry, I must not be hearing you properly,” he says, voice barely above a whisper. “It sounded like you just told me that you let both of our charges run off without a single guard on them. Please tell me that I heard wrong, Jason.”

Jason gulps once and then visibly makes himself stand straighter under Bruce’s scrutiny. “I thought they’d just go to the elevator and back,” Jason explains. “Dick was just supposed to go and keep Tim from running off and getting hurt, but it looks like they got in the elevator and that’s when we lost track of them.”

“Let’s go,” Bruce snaps, “We’re going to find them and bring them back upstairs. They _will_ understand why leaving the room without a guard at all times even if I have to do it myself.” Bruce turns on a sharp point and then strides out of his room, back high and straight as though he’s long since prepared for battle.

He doesn’t look back to see if Jason is following him. He doesn’t have to.

Bruce walks past where Kory and Cassandra are doing their best to keep Helena busy and feels the skin around his admittedly wide mouth tighten in a frown. Helena --his daughter-- is an unknown variable. She’s innocent in a way that no one else in the room is and Bruce can’t help worrying about her in addition to worrying about Dick.

As Bruce reaches for the doorknob, he hears the sound of knocking coming from the other side. He flinches first, fingers going for the gun in his shoulder holster on instinct as he leans in close so that he can look through the little peephole. He sees Dick’s face and his brilliantly blue eyes first and that’s all the confirmation that he needs before yanking the door open.

“What were you thinking,” Bruce says on an exhale, feeling all of his anger and frustration with Dick’s utter carelessness rush out of his body when he takes a good look at the other man’s wan face. “You could have been hurt or killed or--”

Dick pushes past Bruce, cutting him off just from the strangeness of his silence alone. He doesn’t look at Bruce, doesn’t look at anyone until he makes it back to the couch and drops down with a heavy thud.

“I know, Bruce,” Dick says after Tim moves to sit on the floor by his feet, “I know exactly what could have happened to me. We got a first hand glimpse in the elevator.” Dick reaches out and strokes his fingers through Tim’s short black hair, petting his brother with quick strokes of his fingertips until the teenager makes a soft sound and makes a half-hearted attempt at wiggling away.

The intimacy of that moment makes Bruce jealous on a level that he doesn’t much feel comfortable analyzing. Instead, Bruce pushes the dark thought aside and moves to sit across from Dick. He covers Dick’s knee with his hand and squeezes gently until Dick looks at him and blinks twice. “Can you tell us what happened?”

Dick pushes out his breath in a frustrated sigh. “There was a man waiting for us downstairs when we got to the first floor,” he says without looking up at Bruce and the others. “I’ve never seen him before, but he sure as hell knew me --us, I mean.”

“What did he do to you,” Bruce asks, “You’re not hurt are you?”

Shaking his head, Dick finally looks up at Bruce. “He didn’t touch us,” Dick says in a soft voice. “He knew about you, Bruce, and he threatened Tim.” The upset noise that Kory makes next nearly drowns out what Dick says next. “But he didn’t hurt us.”

Anger, thunderous and sudden, comes upon Bruce. He feels himself frowning, feels his face warm with fury, and then has to make an effort to calm down. “What did he look like? Tell me everything in detail.” When Dick opens his mouth to respond, Bruce blinks as an idea hits him. “Hold on for a second on that, Dick.”

Bruce turns to where Cassandra and Jason are sharing a stretch of wall. “Can one of you record this for me?” Both of them start rifling through their pockets for the personal recorders that they keep on hand, but Cassandra’s little squeak of triumph comes first. She brings the little recorder over and then flicks it on with a flick of her thumb so that the little red light comes on.

“Should I start now?” Dick asks, gaze flickering between Bruce and the tiny recording device.

Bruce squeezes Dick’s knee again and manages a smile for him that doesn’t feel forced. “Go ahead.”

It takes Dick a while, but slowly the story comes out in full. He tells everyone about the man in the elevator, about the guards that shadowed him, and of how personal space didn’t seem to be a part of his vocabulary. He describes the man in full detail; from the way the brim of his fedora wasn’t low enough to hide his eyes down to the obvious bulge of a weapon in the waist of his pants. Even when his voice starts to shake, Dick pushes on.

“He said that his name, um--” Here Dick’s voice wavers and he looks around the room quietly, glancing first at Kory and Barbara before looking over at Bruce. “He said that his name is Joe, and I know it can’t possibly be his real name, but I-I think it is.” The fingers of Dick’s right hand spasm and then curl into a fist before he forces his breath out in a sigh that seems visibly painful and rests his hand lightly on top of Bruce’s own. “And-- and he mentioned my parents before he got off the elevator.”

At that revelation, the tension in the room becomes palpable.

Barbara’s voice shakes slightly when she speaks. “He mentioned your parents?”

“Y-yeah,” Dick says, stumbling slightly on the words. “He said that they had professional bodyguards and that Bruce doesn’t have what it takes.”

Bruce hears himself making a noise --a rude noise-- and he forces himself to breathe and focus on the way that Dick’s callused fingers brushed over the top of his hand. “We’ll see about that,” he says in his very next breath as though there wasn’t even an attempt made at keeping his cool. “I need someone to go get the security tapes for the elevator. Jason?”

“Yeah, boss,” Jason says, snapping to attention. “I’ll handle it. I’ll go get the manager and get him to open the place up for me. I’ll have the footage for you in an hour.” He leaves after Bruce thanks him, striding out of the hotel suite without a backwards glance.

With Jason gone, Bruce looks at the three women sitting across from him. Kory and Barbara meet his gaze and hold it, but Selina frowns and breaks the small staring contest after several seconds in favor of pressing her mouth to Helena’s dark curls and closing her eyes. Bruce isn’t surprised.

“We need to share what we know,” Bruce says in a sharp tone. “All of us. All of it.” He brushes his thumb over the back of Dick’s hand in an awkward little caress, but then pulls away as the urge to let the touch linger chimes loudly in his head. “Harvey Dent gave us a box of files and evidence that we need to go through. Barbara, you said that you and Kory had some things to share.” Bruce pauses and then wipes his suddenly sweaty hands on the front of his pants. “And Selina... Selina, I know you know more than you’re telling.”

Selina doesn’t flinch. She frowns at Bruce with her eyes closed and then opens them slowly, vivid blue flashing against her brown skin. “I do,” she says and in the silent room, the confession seems extra loud. “But you’re not going to like it.”

%MCEPASTEBIN%


End file.
